Kim  thomWs 

on 

Old  Poctrmcs 


tihmvy  of t:he  trheological  ^tmimry 

PRINCETON  .  NEW  JERSEY 


PRESENTED  BY 

The  L;state  of 
Mrs.  Rosa  Davison 


EXLIBRIS 


try<^  -  dike,  /^^y- 


♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ 

2  ORDER  FROM  « 

t  CHURCH  OF  THE  X 


1 


Digitized  by 

the  Internet  Archive 

in  2014 

https://archive.org/details/newthoughtsonoldOOmurr_0 


New  Thoughts  on 
Old  Doctrines 

/<>  ' 

(       DEC   15  1964 

BY  ss'i\^ 

W.  JOHN  MURRAY 

AUTHOR  OF  ASTOR  UECTUUES,  SIENTAI, 
MEDICINE,   KECESSITV   OF  LAW, 
REALM  OF  REALITT,  ETC. 


THE  DIVINE  SCIENCE  PUBLISHING 
:  :  :  COMPANY,  Inc.  : 
113  WEST  87th  STREET,  NEW  YORK,  N.  Y. 


"To  whom  then  will  ye  liken  God?  or  what  likeness  will  ye 

compare  unto  him? 

"Thou  thoughtest  that  I  was  altogether  such  an  one  as 
thyself,  but  I  will  reprove  thee,  and  set  them  in  order  before 
thine  eyes. 

"Whom  therefore  ye  ignorantly  worship,  him  declare  I 
unto  you. 

"For  though  there  be  many  that  are  called  gods,  whether 
in  heaven  or  earth  ...  to  us  there  is  but  one  true  God, 
the  Father,  of  whom  are  all  things,  and  we  in  him. 

"The  only  begotten  Son,  which  is  in  the  bosom  of  the 
Father,  he  hath  declared  him. 

"O  righteous  Father,  the  world  hath  not  known  thee,  but 
I  have  known  thee. 

"Exalt  ye  the  Lord  our  God,  for  he  is  holy. 

"God  is  Love,  and  he  that  dwelleth  in  love  dwelleth  in 
God. 

"A  Lord  of  truth  and  without  iniquity. 
"He  is  thy  Life  and  the  length  of  thy  days. 
"It  is  God  that  girdeth  me  with  strength,  and  maketh  my 
way  perfect. 

"In  whose  hand  is  the  soul  of  every  living  thing,  and  the 
breath  of  all  mankind. 

"Thine,  O  Lord,  is  the  greatness,  and  the  power,  and  the 
glory,  and  the  victory  and  the  majesty  .  .  .  Thou  reignest 
over  all." 


Copyright,  IS18,  'hv  Vv .  Jolin  Murray 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 


The  Changeless  Reality   3 

Self-Discovery   33 

Love   58 

Prayer  In  Divine  Science   65 

The  Atonement   97 

Life   129 

God,  The  Banker   161 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


"Every  good  gift,  and  everj'  perfect  gift  is  from  above, 
and  Cometh  down  from  the  Father  of  lights,  with  whom 
is  no  variableness,  neither  shadow  of  turning." — JAaiES 
1:17. 

When  Jesus  said,  "O  righteous  Father, 
the  world  hath  not  known  thee,  but  I  have 
known  thee,"  he  set  forth  in  ven^  few  words 
the  great  ignorance  of  the  race  concerning 
the  most  essential  thing  in  the  universe, 
which  is  "To  know  God  aright,"  for  this  is 
Life  eternal. 

Divine  Science  has  come  to  emphasise  the 
fact  that  in  order  to  know  God  aright  we 
must  study,  and  meditate  upon  the  essential 
Characteristics  of  deity.  It  is  very  evident 
that  we  have  not  kno^\Ti  God  aright,  because 
we  have  not  only  not  entered  into  Life  eter- 
nal, but  we  have  not  enjoyed  the  peace  and 
poise  and  power  and  prosperity  to  which  w  e 
are  told  the  "sons  and  daughters  of  God" 
are  so  richlv  entitled. 

[3] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


"O  heavenly  Father,  the  world  hath  not 
known  thee,  but  I  have  Imown  thee!"  Could 
it  be  that  all  who  had  gone  before  Jesus,  and 
all  who  were  living  contemporaneously  with 
Jesus,  were  so  densely  ignorant  of  the  tme 
character  of  God? 

Is  it  not  true  that  long  before  Jesus  came, 
God  was  a  household  word  all  over  the 
world?  Tme,  there  were  those  called  pagans 
who  believed  in  many  gods.  Let  us  exam- 
ine some  of  the  beliefs  about  God.  At  best 
all  the  race  has  had  are  its  peculiar  concepts 
of  Deity.  No  man  hath  known  God  at  any 
time  and  continued  to  live  as  a  mortal,  and 
knowledge  of  God  in  the  fullest  sense  of 
the  word  seems  to  be  quite  impossible.  But 
this  does  not  deter  us  from  the  incumbent 
necessity  of  investigating  for  ourselves  what 
God  must  be  in  liis  essential  characteristics. 

When  Abraham  came  out  upon  the  great 
scene  of  spiritual  action,  he  came  out  from 
a  people  who  believed  in  many  gods.  His 
father,  the  Talmud  tells  us,  was  a  manufac- 
turer of  gods.  We  say,  "Imagine  it!  A 
maker  of  gods!"  And  we  think  that  we 
[4] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


are  so  far  removed  from  that  phase  of  igno- 
rance that  we  are  not  makers  of  idols,  but  if 
we  examine  the  question  scientifically,  we 
find  that  we  are  just  what  the  pagans  were, 
— ^makers,  manufacturers  of  gods. 

In  other  words,  your  concept  of  God  is 
not  mine,  and  my  concept  of  God  is  not  the 
orthodox  Christian's  concept  of  God,  and 
the  orthodox  Christian's  concept  of  God  is 
not  the  Hebrew's  concept  of  God  at  all. 
And  so  in  reality  we  are  makers  of  gods. 
Perhaps  not  of  tin,  of  wood  and  of  stone  and 
golden  gods,  but  gods  nevertheless.  He  was 
a  wise  man  and  a  great  wit  who  said  that 
"Ever  since  God  had  created  man  in  his  own 
image  and  after  his  own  likeness,  man  had 
been  striving  to  return  the  compliment." 

In  the  infancy  of  the  race,  in  the  attempt 
to  return  the  comphment,  men  made  God 
after  their  own  image  and  likeness.  They 
were  brutal,  carnal,  material,  and  so  they 
had  a  brutal  and  a  carnal  and  a  material 
God.  If  they  wished  to  sweep  a  personal 
enemy  out  of  the  way,  and  had  sufficient 
physical  force,  power,  and  strength  to  do  it, 
[5] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


they  did  so,  and  so  they  measured  the  power 
of  God  by  their  puny,  finite  power,  and  said, 
"If  we  can  remove  one  enemy  out  of  the  way, 
God  can  sweep  an  entire  nation  out  of  ex- 
istence," hence  the  ciy,  "O  Lord  God  of 
Israel,  destroy  thine  enemies  from  before 
thy  face."  Men  had  the  idea  that  His  ene- 
mies were  their  enemies, — or  rather  that 
their  enemies  were  His.  So  they  cried  out  to 
this  personal  God  that  He  might  destroy 
His  enemies  from  before  His  face,  when  as  a 
matter  of  fact  they  were  men's  enemies  only, 
and  enemies  only  in  belief. 

Thus  men  have  begotten  in  the  infancy  of 
the  race  a  personal  God,  the  Hebrew  Je- 
hovah, a  mighty  potentate,  a  selfish,  avari- 
cious, cruel,  malicious,  wrathful  and  jealous 
God,  and  also  a  personal  devil.  In  our  in- 
fancy we  had  two  persons,  a  personal  God 
and  a  personal  devil,  and  then  we  gi*ew  up 
into  our  youth  where  we  began  to  change 
our  views  concerning  God.  We  rose  above 
the  idea  of  personality  connected  with  God, 
and  substituted  for  a  personal  God  and  a 
personal  devil,  two  gi'eat  principles, — the 
[6] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


principle  of  good  and  the  principle  of  evil. 
We  felt  that  we  had  made  some  strides  in 
our  education.  We  rather  smiled  at  the  man 
who  thought  of  God  in  terms  of  personality, 
and  rather  ridiculed  those  theologies  which 
emphasised  a  personal  devil  with  horns, 
hoofs  and  tail;  we  felt  that  we  had  grown 
tremendously.  We  could  listen  no  longer  to 
the  doctrine  of  a  personal  God  and  a  per- 
sonal devil. 

Next  we  come  to  the  approaching  man- 
hood of  the  race,  where  Divine  Science  brings 
to  our  consciousness  the  great  mathematical 
fact  that  principle  in  order  to  be  principle 
at  all,  can  only  be  one.  There  cannot  be  two 
principles  forever  warring  with  each  other. 
Thus  in  Divine  Science  to  speak  of  God  as 
Principle,  a  cold,  abstract,  mathematical 
term  to  apply  to  this  warm  and  pulsating 
Presence  which  we  had  been  taught  to  speak 
of  as  God  in  the  past.  Here  we  incurred  the 
hostility  and  the  antagonism  of  those  who 
saw  this  divine  Principle  as  a  mere  speck 
upon  the  great  ocean  of  humanity,  as  a 
something  that  had  come  to  torment  but  not 
[7] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


to  educate  them,  and  out  of  this  came  a 
great  many  discussions  and  dissertations. 

I  remember  a  very  noted  clergyman  who, 
when  he  found  that  certain  members  of  his 
flock,  having  exhausted  the  systems  of  ma- 
teria medica,  and  having  exhausted  the 
power  of  their  own  prayers  and  their  pastors 
also,  began  to  turn  to  Divine  Science  for 
healing  and  for  health.  When  the  pastor  dis- 
covered this  departure  from  his  pews  of  the 
most  thoughtful  people  in  his  church,  then 
discovered  that  it  was  only  a  question  of 
time  when  the  church  would  not  be  able  to 
support  itself,  and  he  felt  that  he  must  pro- 
tect his  church  against  this  emigration  of 
his  best  people,  he  set  himself  the  task  of 
presenting  to  his  congregation  the  subject 
of  divine  Principle  in  all  the  hideousness 
and  ugliness  of  a  distorted  imagination. 

I  remember  very  distinctly  one  of  this 
man's  most  telling  points.  He  said,  "These 
Divine  Principle  people  have  destroyed 
God.  They  have  reduced  God  to  a  princi- 
ple. 'They  have  taken  away  the  Lord  and 
we  know  not  where  they  have  laid  him.' 
[8] 


THE  CHANGELESS  KEALITY 


They  are  a  godless  people.  They  have  re- 
duced prayer  to  bold,  brazen  affirmations. 
They  consider  themselves  equal  Avith  God. 
Not  only  are  they  unscientific,  but  they  are 
not  Christian,  and  I  warn  you  against  iden- 
tifying yourselves  with  them." 

This  was  some  years  ago.  Happily  the 
pulpit  is  becoming  more  tolerant  with  the 
idea  that  Divine  Scientists  "have  reduced 
God  to  a  principle." 

But  Divine  Science  has  not  reduced  God 
to  anything,  and  it  cannot  reduce  God  be- 
cause it  proposes  to  do  the  very  opposite  to 
that.  The  purpose  of  Divine  Science  is  to 
magnify  the  Lord,  and  if  we  do  anything 
with  the  Lord,  it  is  that  we  exalt  him.  We 
exalt  God  to  the  Principle  of  all  principles, 
to  the  whole.  This  is  not  a  reduction,  but 
an  exaltation  of  God. 

But  we  must  know  what  we  mean  when 
we  use  the  word  principle,  and  if  our  clerical 
friend  had  taken  the  time  and  the  pains  to 
do  what  so  veiy  few  intelligent  men  ever 
do, — because  they  assume  that  they  know 
the  meaning  of  all  words  that  they  use, — if 
[9] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


he  had  taken  the  time  and  the  trouble  to 
look  up  in  the  dictionary  the  term  principle, 
he  would  have  seen  that  it  is  one  of  the  very- 
finest  synonyms  that  one  can  use  for  God. 

What  does  principle  mean?  I  have 
with  me  the  definition  of  the  word  "princi- 
ple" as  it  occurs  in  the  Standard  Dictionary 
so  that  you  will  know  that  I  am  not  giving 
you  my  own  definition : 

Principle,  "a  source  or  cause  from  which 
a  thing  proceeds,  a  power  that  acts  continu- 
ously or  uniformly;  a  permanent  or  funda- 
mental cause  that  naturally  or  necessarily 
produces  certain  results  on  all  occasions." 

This  is  the  definition  of  principle  as  it  oc- 
curs in  your  Standard  Dictionary.  "A 
source  from  which  things  proceed,  a  cause, 
a  changeless  reality."  Can  you  give  a  more 
comprehensive  title  to  God  than  this?  The 
Only  Source,  the  Only  Cause,  the  Only  fun- 
damental Reality!  The  one  great  all-con- 
trolling omnipresent  Principle  of  Being. 

If  we  were  Hebrews,  we  would  say,  "The 
God  of  the  Universe."  If  we  were  orthodox 
Christians,  we  would  say,  "The  Father  of 
[10  ]' 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


all  mankind."  But  because  we  are  striving 
to  be  philosophical  Christians,  and  Christian 
philosophers,  we  say  the  Principle  of  Being. 

At  first,  of  course,  it  is  cold  and  abstract 
because  it  was  not  a  term  that  was  used  in 
our  older  order  of  religious  teaching,  but 
when  it  is  scientifically  explained,  I  am  sure 
that  you  will  agi-ee  that  no  better  phrase  can 
be  used  for  the  God  of  the  universe,  or  Fa- 
ther of  all  mankind,  than  the  Principle  of 
Being. 

We  have  said  that  there  are  not  two  prin- 
ciples in  the  universe,  a  principle  of  good 
and  a  principle  of  evil.  If  Principle  exists 
at  all,  it  must  be  One,  and  this  Principle  can- 
not be  dual  in  its  operations.  That  is,  it  can 
not  be  good  on  one  side  of  its  being  and  evil 
on  the  other. 

Only  a  few  days  ago  I  read  a  prayer  by 
one  of  tlie  most  intelligent  men  we  have  in 
this  country^  a  devotee  of  universal  peace. 
He  was  talking  to  God  as  he  might  talk  to  an 
ordinary  man.  He  said,  "Oh,  Lord  God,  we 
ask  thee  in  all  thy  clemency  and  tenderness 
and  affection  to  intercede  with  these  conflict- 
[11] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


ing  nations  to  bring  peace  instead  of  war;  to 
change  the  hearts  of  men  so  that  love  will 
take  the  place  of  hate  and  anger  and  mal- 
ice." 

He  went  on  with  this  marvellous  prayer, 
— a  very  good  prayer  under  the  old  thought, 
but  not  at  all  consistent  with  our  text  from 
James  the  Apostle.  James  says  that  God  is 
not  a  variable  God,  and  that  with  him  there 
"is  no  variableness  neither  shadow  of  turn- 
ing." God  is  "the  same  yesterday,  to-day 
and  forever." 

We  are  asking  God  to  do  for  the  nations 
what  the  nations  alone  can  do  for  them- 
selves. Is  it  rash  to  say  that  God  cannot 
prevent  man  from  committing  a  sin  if  he  is 
bent  upon  committing  it? 

It  is  a  necessity  of  the  old  theological  dog- 
ma, that  man  is  a  free  moral  agent,  that  God, 
in  bestowing  upon  man  the  distinguishing 
characteristics  of  mind,  bestowed  upon  him, 
free  moral  agency.  He  gave  to  him  will  and 
domination  and  then  left  it  to  man  to  exer- 
cise these  according  to  his  own  judgment, 
discretion  and  wisdom,  or  lack  of  it. 

[12] 


THE  CHANGELESS  EEALITY 


And  so  man  in  the  exercise  of  these  God- 
given  faculties,  wherever  he  is  cooperating 
with  divine  Principle,  is  living  in  love  and 
health  and  harmonj^,  and  not  in  pain,  sick- 
ness, disease  and  death ;  and  wherever  he  has 
worked  in  opposition  to  the  rules  growing 
out  of  divine  Principle,  he  has  sown  the 
seeds  of  unhappiness,  misery,  ill  health  and 
death  itself. 

Therefore  the  responsibility  rests  largely, 
— ^may  I  say  altogether  and  exclusively  with 
man? 

There  was  a  time  when  we  felt  that  we 
could  sin  up  to  the  very  last  minute,  and 
then  by  our  tearful  petitions  and  aided  by 
the  accumulated  prayers  of  our  friends,  we 
might  ask  God  to  remit  the  penalty  due  to 
our  sins.  Death-bed  repentance  we  called  it. 
Some  of  us  had  very  little  faith  in  it. 

The  only  destruction  of  sin  there  can  be 
is  not  so  much  the  remission  of  the  penalty 
due  to  it  according  to  Law,  as  it  is  in  the  ref- 
ormation of  the  sinner  himself.  There  is  a 
law  back  of  sin.  You  cannot  sin  without 
suffering,  and  we  cannot  sin  up  to  the  last 
[13] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


moment,  and  then  ask  God  to  push  us  un- 
ceremoniously into  the  arms  of  Abraham. 
It  is  not  consistent  with  law.  It  is  not  con- 
sistent with  love,  not  even  the  love  of  God 
itself. 

When  we  speak  of  God  as  Principle, 
while  at  first  it  grates  harshly  upon  the  ear, 
we  see  presently  that  it  is  far  more  loving 
than  our  old  concept  of  God.  Sometimes  we 
are  asked,  "How  can  I  pray  to  a  Princi- 
ple?" I  think  that  this  is  one  of  the  com- 
monest questions  that  is  asked  of  the  student 
of  Divine  Science.  How  can  I  pray  to  a 
Principle?  It  seems  almost  impossible  to 
pray  to  a  Principle. 

In  music,  in  mathematics,  you  don't  pray 
to  the  principle  of  these,  do  you?  How  do 
you  acquire  musical  knowledge,  how  do  you 
acquire  mathematical  proficiency  ? 

Is  it  not  by  conforming  to  the  principle, 
by  understanding  its  rules  and  working  ac- 
cording to  them,  that  you  solve  your  prob- 
lems in  music  and  in  mathematics?  It  is 
identically  the  same  in  metaphysics, — iden- 
tically the  same  in  true  religion.  For  it  is 
[14] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


only  as  Ave  understand  the  Principle  of  Be- 
ing, acquaint  ourselves  intelligently  with  its 
rules,  that  we  can  do  what  Paul  the  Apostle 
said  we  must  do — "work  out  our  o\Yn  salva- 
tion," not  with  fear  and  trembling,  but  with 
love  and  courage. 

It  is  only  as  we  become  intelligently  ac- 
quainted with  God  as  the  Principle  of  the 
universe,  that  we  can  acquaint  ourselves 
with  these  rules  that  naturally  grow  out  of 
the  Principle,  and  then  begin  to  solve  our 
own  problems.  Because  I  take  it,  that  this  is 
the  work  of  every  man  in  the  world.  He  is 
not  to  have  God  solve  his  problems  for  him, 
but  is  to  solve  his  own  problems  according 
to  the  Principle. 

Is  the  principle  of  mathematics  less  loving 
because  it  places  its  whole  self,  its  undivided 
self,  as  a  servant  of  the  child  who  is  study- 
ing arithmetic,  or  at  the  service  of  the  ac- 
countant who  is  working  out  some  great 
mathematical  problem,  or  of  the  engineer 
who  is  doing  some  very  delicate  work  ac- 
cording to  its  rules?  Is  the  principle  of 
mathematics  less  loving,  less  generous  and 
[15] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


of  less  usefulness  because  it  permits  the  stu- 
dent of  it  to  solve  his  problems  on  any  plane 
of  mathematical  experience  with  infallible 
exactitude?   Certainly  not. 

Is  the  Principle  of  Being,  which  men  call 
God,  less  loving  because  it  enables  man 
everywhere  and  anywhere  to  work  out  his 
own  salvation  according  to  its  rules?  Is  it 
less  loving  because  it  is  not  a  personal  God 
and  more  or  less  capricious? 

Let  us  consider  the  difference  between  the 
old  thought  God  as  person,  and  the  New 
Thought  God  as  Principle.  The  old 
thought  of  God  as  person,  leads  us  into  this 
peculiar  belief,  that  if  it  were  the  will  of 
God  and  we  pray  with  sufficient  intensity 
and  earnestness,  certain  discomforts,  dis- 
eases, depressions  and  discouragements 
might  be  taken  away  out  of  our  lives.  We 
talked  to  God  as  if  he  were  a  person  situated 
somewhere  in  a  far-off  realm,  surveying  the 
world  as  the  monarch  of  all  he  had  created, 
and  then  we  asked  him  to  remove  some  ter- 
rible calamity  from  our  lives,  and,  if  we  were 
very  good,  sometimes, — almost  invariably, 
[16] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


we  ended  our  prayer  with,  "if  it  be  thy  will, 
Oh,  God." 

It  were  presumptuous  to  ask  him  to  do 
it  if  it  were  not  his  will,  so  we  finished  our 
prayer  with  that  petition,  "if  it  be  thy  will. 
Oh,  God." 

And  I  submit  it  to  you  to  analyse  your 
own  experiences,  and  to  ask  yourself  how 
many  times  when  you  have  prayed  that 
prayer  with  all  the  earnestness  of  your  soul, 
with  all  the  intensity  of  your  desire  to  be 
freed  from  something  inimical  to  your  inter- 
ests or  health, — I  ask  you  how  many  times 
you  believed  that  your  prayers  to  a  personal 
God  were  really  answered? 

How  often  have  you  consoled  yourself 
with  the  belief  that  perhaps  it  were  not  best 
for  you  to  have  good  health,  perhaps  it  were 
not  best  for  you  to  be  freed  from  the  clank- 
ing chains  of  poverty,  perhaps  it  were  not 
best  for  you  to  live  at  all, — and  so  you  have 
tried  to  reconcile  your  condition  with  this 
concept  of  God. 

Over  here  another  man  without  any 
prayer  at  all  is  perfectly  well,  perfectly 
[17] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


healthy,  perfectly  strong  and  prosperous, 
while  here  you  pray  and  petition,  and  beg 
and  whine  almost,  to  God  and  j^^et  you  go  on 
in  the  same  old  way !  I  ask  if  you  have  had 
very  many  answers  to  prayers  along  these 
lines. 

Then  is  it  so  wrong,  so  unchristian  to  sub- 
stitute divine  Principle  for  a  personal  God, 
if  by  understanding  this  divine  Principle, 
we  can  solve  our  own  problems?  Does  this 
mean  that  we  should  cease  praying  alto- 
gether? Oh  no,  no,  not  at  all.  It  merely 
means  that  we  change  the  character  of  our 
prayer. 

The  prayers  of  Jesus  were  not  the  prayers 
of  John  the  Baptist.  The  prayers  of  Jesus 
were  so  wholly  unlike  anything  that  had  ever 
gone  up  before  his  time,  that  we  wonder 
what  mysterious  power  there  was  in  them, 
because  they  always  bore  results.  Did  he 
stand  at  the  tomb  of  Lazarus  and  pray  si- 
lently, and  call  for  Lazarus  to  come  forth? 
Lazarus  came  forth.  But  before  he  came 
forth  Jesus  said  to  those  who  stood  by,  "The 
Father  hath  heard  me,"  and  he  addressed  his 
[18] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


heavenly  Father  and  said,  "I  thank  thee, 
Father,  that  thou  hast  heard  me,  for  I  know 
that  thou  hearest  me  always." 

Why  was  Jesus  so  sure,  why  was  he  so 
confident  that  God  heard  him  always  ?  Why 
is  the  expert  mathematician  so  sure,  so  con- 
fident of  the  principle  of  mathematics,  that 
it  will  support  him  whenever  he  cooperates 
with  its  rules  ?  Because  he  has  tried  it.  He 
has  tested  it.  He  knows  it  is  unerring.  He 
never  thinks  of  accusing  the  principle  of 
mathematics  for  any  error  that  he  may  make 
personally.  It  never  occurs  to  him  to  trace 
the  errors  on  his  ledger  to  the  principle  of 
mathematics.  To  him  it  is  the  most  uner- 
ring thing  in  the  world.  And  so  it  was  with 
Jesus;  it  never  occurred  to  him  to  trace  the 
death  of  Lazarus  to  God.  Other  men  might 
have  thought  that  it  was  the  will  of  God, 
and  that  for  some  wise  and  inscrutable  pur- 
pose of  his  own  God  had  taken  this  wonder- 
ful youth  from  these  two  marvellous  women, 
his  sisters.  Men  might  think  that,  but  not  so 
with  Jesus. 

The  one  fixed  idea  in  the  mind  of  Jesus 
[19] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


was  simply  this.  It  is  not  the  will  of  my 
Father  that  any  one  should  die,  but  rather 
that  he  should  be  converted.  Ever  and  al- 
ways before  the  mind  of  Jesus  was  a  great 
fixed  fact,  and  that  fact  was  based  upon  the 
immutable  Principle,  the  Principle  of  Life 
itself.  Jesus  understood  the  definition  of 
principle.  He  understood  it  to  mean  "cause, 
source,  origin,  that  from  which  things  pro- 
ceed," and  he  also  understood  it  to  mean 
that  it  was  without  "variableness"  or 
"shadow  of  turning."  In  other  words,  that 
it  was  the  same  "yesterday,  to-day,  and  for- 
ever," and  because  it  was  the  Life  Principle, 
it  had  no  death  thought  in  it.  Because  it  was 
the  Life  Principle  it  only  recognised  things 
like  Itself.  If  men  departed  from  Principle 
and  followed  the  bent  of  their  imaginations 
and  reaped  the  consequences  for  so  doing, 
that  could  never  be  traced  to  God. 

So  Jesus  interpreted  the  will  of  God  ac- 
cording to  divine  Principle,  and  not  accord- 
ing to  the  Jehovistic  idea  of  God.  It  never 
occurred  to  Jesus  that  God  could  cause  vic- 
tory to  perch  upon  the  banner  of  one  army 
[20] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


over  against  the  contending  army.  And  yet 
within  your  recollection  and  within  mine,  we 
have  seen  armies  separated  only  by  a  very 
narrow  river,  in  the  dusk  of  evening  when 
firing  had  ceased,  whose  chaplains  knelt  in 
prayer  asking  God  that  he  might  vouch- 
safe victory  to  their  respective  armies. 
Could  God  answer  both  ?  Impossible !  That 
is  always  the  trouble  with  going  to  a  per- 
sonal God. 

Indeed,  when  we  think  of  a  personal  God, 
we  think  of  a  capricious,  vacillating  Deity, 
who  for  some  reason  of  his  own,  is  going  to 
confer  a  blessing  upon  one  and  a  curse  upon 
another. 

During  the  Civil  War  this  happened  with 
us,  but  it  happens  anywhere  where  men  have 
this  idea  of  God.  One  man  prays  for  rain, 
another  for  sunshine.  Surely  a  personal 
God  can  not  answer  affirmatively  both  of 
these  prayers,  because  they  are  so  diamet- 
rically opposed  the  one  to  the  other. 

Do  we  not  see  that  we  have  had  a  very 
feeble, — dare  I  say  foolish  concept  of  God? 
Have  we  not  as  the  wit  said,  been  striving 
[21] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


from  the  beginning  of  all  time  to  return  the 
compliment,  and  to  make  God  in  our  own 
image  and  likeness? 

And  what  are  we  as  we  understand  our- 
selves? Vacillating,  changeable,  now  lov- 
ing, now  hating,  never  the  same  from  one 
day  to  another.  Now  protesting  our  undy- 
ing devotion,  and  to-morrow  as  jealous  as 
can  be,  changing  with  every  moment  of  time. 
What  difference  does  it  make  if  we  have 
many  gods,  or  one  God  of  many  moods? 
None  at  all. 

In  order  to  have  one  God  scientifically, 
we  must  have  divine  Principle  which  knows 
no  change,  which  sendeth  no  evil  into  the  ex- 
perience of  man,  which  does  not  send  sick- 
ness, nor  poverty,  pain  nor  perplexity; 
which  is  always  the  same,  sending  forth  the 
qualities  of  its  own  nature. 
.  That  is  why  Jesus  used  the  sun  as  the 
simile  or  symbol  of  God.  It  causes  its  rays 
to  fall  upon  the  just  and  the  unjust  alike. 
It  glints  into  the  hospital  cot,  into  the  prison 
cell,  into  the  palace,  into  the  hovel, — any- 
where where  men  will  permit  it,  there  it  radi- 
[22] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


ates  for  us.  So  it  is  with  the  great  universal 
Principle,  which  is  God, — there  is  no  place 
where  it  is  not.  All  we  have  to  do  is  to  lift 
the  shade.  The  Esquimaux  can  work  ac- 
cording to  it,  the  Frenchman,  the  Italian, 
the  Swede, — all  can  work  with  it  as  with  the 
principle  of  mathematics. 

And  one  of  the  great  beauties  about  it  is 
that  we  cannot  exhaust  it.  Every  one  can 
be  using  this  Principle,  solving  his  own  par- 
ticular problems  with  it,  without  exhausting 
it. 

Is  it  then  reducing  God  to  a  principle? 
Is  it  a  reduction  of  God  at  all?  Is  it  not 
rather  an  exaltation  of  God  that  makes  Him 
immeasurable,  omnipotent,  omnipresent? 

These  are  questions  we  must  submit  to  our 
sane  thought.  Divine  Scientists  are  intelli- 
gent. If  they  were  not  intelligent,  they 
could  not  be  Divine  Scientists.  There  is 
some  difference  between  them  and  other  fol- 
lowers. In  other  churches  we  may  accept, 
but  in  this  we  cannot  unless  we  investigate 
thoughtfully  and  prayerfully  the  very  se- 
crets of  being  itself.  It  requires  intelligence 
[23] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


to  do  that.  Non-intelligent  men  may  be 
healed  by  it,  but  to  be  a  Divine  Scientist  it 
requires  intelligence  to  understand  it,  and 
we  can  never  understand  it  until  we  realise 
that  God  is  Principle,  and  that  in  calling 
God  Principle,  we  have  not  reduced  God  in 
the  slightest  degree.  On  the  contrary  we 
have  done  just  what  the  Psalmist  said, — ^we 
have  "magnified  the  Lord." 

What  does  the  word  "magnify"  mean?  I 
used  to  think  in  my  old  religious  belief,  that 
to  magnify  the  Lord  meant  to  praise  God. 
The  word  "magnify"  does  not  mean  praise 
at  all. 

Again  we  are  forced  to  look  it  up  in  our 
dictionary,  because  as  I  said  before,  we  use 
so  many  words  without  realising  what  they 
actually  mean.  We  take  it  for  granted  that 
we  know  because  they  are  in  such  common 
use,  and  as  we  use  them  every  day,  we  con- 
clude naturally  that  we  understand  them. 
If  a  man  should  say  to  you,  "Do  you  know 
what  'magnify  the  Lord'  means?"  you 
would  say,  "Certainly,  of  course.  Praise  the 
Lord."  "Magnify"  means,  to  make  big. 
[24] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


In  Divine  Science  we  understand  this  re- 
quirement of  the  Psahnist,  "magnify  the 
Lord,"  to  mean  that  you  should  make  God, 
this  Divine  Principle,  so  big  that  there  is  no 
room  in  the  universe  for  anything  but  God, 
and  so  evil  is  non-existent;  no  matter 
how  real  it  seems  to  be.  We  treat  evil 
just  as  we  treat  errors  in  mathematics.  Not 
as  realities  but  as  departures  from  principle, 
as  the  mistakes  that  men  make  in  trying  to 
solve  the  problems  of  life.  We  never  think 
of  attributing  them  to  God.  It  never  occurs 
to  us. 

Outside  of  Divine  Science,  every  evil  and 
catastrophe  we  can  explain  in  no  other  way, 
we  say,  "It  is  God's  will,"  don't  we?  Of 
course  we  do.  Divine  Science  is  the  great 
enlightener.  It  has  come  to  rub  the  sand 
from  our  ej'-es  and  to  pull  back  the  curtain 
and  reveal  this  great  Principle,  and  in  the 
light  of  these  truths  we  are  to  save  ourselves. 

Because,  after  all,  that  is  what  we  are 
called  upon  to  do.  It  sounds  like  a  harsh 
statement  to  say  that  God  will  never  save  us. 
It  is  a  sweeter  statement  to  say  that  God  has 
[25] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


always  saved  us.  For  in  the  mind  of  God 
man  does  not  need  saving,  for  there  we  are 
as  perfect  as  on  the  day  he  brought  us  into 
being.  All  this  seeming  imperfection  has 
grown  around  us,  and  is  nothing  more  nor 
less  than  the  incrustation  of  error  that  we 
have  indulged  in,  that  we  have  believed  in  as 
Truth,  and  now  comes  the  law  of  God  to  us 
and  looses  us  and  sets  us  free. 

Sometimes  I  think  the  ordinary  man, — 
and  I  am  an  ordinary  man, — is  very  much 
like  a  hyena  in  a  cage,  the  door  of  which  he 
thinks  is  locked,  and  he  is  walking  up  and 
down  behind  it  with  ceaseless  regularity,  de- 
siring to  get  out,  but  believing  he  is  locked 
in.  That  is  just  where  we  are,  we  desire  to 
get  out  of  our  sins,  inclinations  and  sorrows, 
and  believing  we  are  locked  in,  we  have  to 
remain  where  we  are.  Then  science  comes 
and  says,  "You  are  not  locked  in  at  all.  The 
way  of  egress  is  open  to  you.  Put  your 
hand  upon  the  gate  and  pull  it  towards  you, 
and  walk  out  into  the  freedom  of  God." 
Realise  your  oneness  with  the  infinite  Wis- 
dom. Affirm  it.  Do  not  ask  God  to  do 
[26] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


something  for  you  that  you  can  do  for  your- 
self. Do  not  petition  God  to  save  you  when 
He  has  ah'eadj^  placed  within  you  the  poten- 
tialities of  your  own  salvation.  God  won't 
do  it  for  us.  God  has  done  all  he  can  for  us. 
He  has  given  to  us  power  and  light  and  in- 
telligence to  do  the  thing  ourselves. 

Can  we  ask  more  of  God  than  this?  He 
has  given  to  us  the  very  life  of  His  life,  the 
light  of  His  light,  the  wisdom  of  His  wis- 
dom, the  intelligence  of  His  intelligence. 
What  more  can  we  ask?  Unless  it  be  a 
mythical  heaven, — which  we  do  not  want. 

What  we  want  is  to  know  that  God  is 
here,  that  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  within 
us.  That  is  what  Divine  Science  has  come 
to  reveal  to  us ;  and  if  it  has  given  to  us  the 
Principle  of  Being  instead  of  the  God  of  the 
Hebrews,  or  the  Father  of  all  humankind, — 
if  it  has  given  to  us  the  Principle  of  Being 
that  is  within  us  and  only  awaiting  our  own 
expansion  and  utilisation,  then  I  ask  you 
if  it  has  not  given  to  us  all,  all ! 

It  has  not  robbed  us  of  a  single  thing  ex- 
cept the  things  we  do  not  need  and  do  not 
[27] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


require, — fear,  discontent,  ignorance.  Our 
ignorances  we  are  perfectly  willing  to  be 
shorn  of.  Our  ignorances  are  only  like 
Samson's  locks,  the  signs  of  foolish,  physical 
strength.  They  do  not  mean  anything. 
What  have  they  ever  done  for  us  except  to 
plunge  us  into  misery,  unhappiness  and  dis- 
ease and  death  itself? 

Then,  again,  let  us  think  of  the  nearness 
of  this  Principle.  It  is  in  us  now.  When 
Ave  thought  of  God  as  a  personal  God,  was 
it  not  always  a  distant  personage?  Was  it 
ever  as  near  as  hands  and  feet,  as  a  poet  has 
expressed  it?  Whenever  you  thought  of 
God  was  it  not  of  a  far-away  heaven?  When 
you  raised  your  hands  before  you  in  prayer, 
was  it  not  a  symbol  that  you  were  afar  off, 
and  that  you  felt  God  was  far  away?  You 
do  not  have  to  look  off  into  the  distance  to 
find  the  Principle  of  Life.  It  is  within. 
We  turn  the  gaze  inward  and  find  the  Prin- 
ciple of  Life  there  at  work,  and  if  it  is  not 
there  at  work,  then  we  are  dead  indeed.  If 
the  Principle  of  Life  is  not  at  the  very  cen- 
tre and  heart  and  core  of  your  being,  where 
[28] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


is  it?  Is  it  some  hidden,  concealed,  mystic 
energy  that  is  working  within  you  ?  That  is 
what  we  beheve  in  Divine  Science. 

It  is  not  a  something  that  is  working  or 
operating  upon  us,  or  outside  of  us,  but 
something  that  is  welling  up  within  us  like 
a  well-spring  of  life.  That  is  what  Jesus 
meant  when  he  told  the  Samaritan  woman 
what  he  was  and  said,  "If  thou  hadst  asked 
me  for  the  water  of  life,  I  would  have  given 
it  to  thee,  and  if  thou  hadst  drunk  of  the 
water,  thou  wouldst  never  have  thirsted 
again." 

We  know  that  "the  water  of  life"  that  we 
draw  with  a  bucket  has  to  be  continually  re- 
plenished, but  this  "water  of  life"  that  Jesus 
spoke  of  is  the  understanding  of  God,  it  is 
constant  communion  with  the  invisible  Force 
within  us. 

The  Principle  of  Being, — I  like  the 
phrase — philosophical,  mathematical,  ab- 
stract, cold,  pulseless,  inanimate  to  the  un- 
thinking— a  veritable  flood  of  Life  to  those 
who  grasp  its  real  meaning — a  great  work- 
ing Principle,  a  something  that  we  cannot 
[29] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


be  separated  from  a  single  moment  and  live. 
It  is  very  God  of  very  God. 

Then  have  we,  I  ask  you  in  closing,  have 
we  reduced  God?  Simply  because  we  speak 
of  God  as  Principle,  does  this  reduce  God? 
Does  it  not  rather  magnify  God?  Does  it 
not  rather  exalt  him  above  the  plane  of  all 
personality,  and  make  him  the  great  uni- 
versal Reality,  which  is  neither  he,  nor  she, 
but  It? 

You  cannot  speak  of  God  as  he  or  she 
unless  you  speak  of  It  as  He  and  She  both, 
the  masculine  and  feminine  Principle  of  the 
universe.  Combining  the  courage,  the 
strength,  the  power,  the  mastery  and  domi- 
nation of  the  masculine  with  the  love,  the 
tenderness,  the  sympathy  and  the  compas- 
sion of  the  feminine  in  One,  the  one  universal 
Principle,  sexless,  neither  he  nor  she,  but  It, 
is  perceived  as  the  one  Father-Mother  God. 

The  Principle  of  Being  is  nearer  to  us 
than  that  personal  God  we  believed  in  yes- 
terday; the  Principle  of  Being  is  that  in- 
visible Force  that  is  working  within  us  for 
richness  of  life,  for  health,  for  strength,  for 
[30] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


peace,  for  power.  We  can  no  more  be  sep- 
arated from  it  than  a  smile  can  be  separated 
from  a  face  and  left  out  in  space,  or  a  sun- 
beam can  be  separated  from  the  sun  and  left 
standing  as  a  solitary  entity!  It  can  no 
more  be  done. 

Man  is  ever  one  with  the  Principle  of  Be- 
ing, God  is  ever  with  us  as  we  sit  at  home 
or  walk  abroad,  yea  verily,  "In  him  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being." 

Now  we  can  understand  why  it  is  nearer 
than  our  hands  or  our  feet, — because  it  is 
the  very  thing  by  which  we  live.  It  is  the 
very  thing  by  which  we  move.  It  is  the  very 
thing  by  which  we  breathe.  Separation  from 
God  is  impossible. 

Take  with  you,  I  beg  of  you,  this  thought, 
and  if  it  seems  cold  to  you,  and  if  it  seems 
abstract  and  harsh  to  you,  think  over  it  so- 
berly, carefully,  and  then  compare  it  with 
your  personal  God.  And  remember  that 
Divine  Science  does  not  repudiate,  does  not 
belittle  Deity. 

If  it  repudiates  a  capricious,  a  wrathful, 
and  a  jealous  God,  it  does  not  repudiate 
[31] 


THE  CHANGELESS  REALITY 


God,  it  merely  repudiates  these  attributes, 
these  qualities,  as  not  having  anything  to  do 
with  Deity ;  and  it  gives  back  to  us  the  Prin- 
ciple of  Life  and  Love  and  the  Principle  of 
Success. 


[32] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


"Behold,  what  manner  of  love  the  Father  hath  bestowed 
upon  us,  that  we  should  be  called  the  sons  of  God:  there- 
fore the  world  knoweth  us  not,  because  it  knew  him  not. 

"Beloved,  now  are  we  the  sons  of  God,  and  it  doth  not 
yet  appear  what  we  shall  be:  but  we  know  that,  when  he 
shall  appear,  we  shall  be  like  him;  for  we  shall  know  him 
as  he  is. 

"We  know  that  whosoever  is  born  of  God  sinneth  not ;  but 
he  that  is  begotten  of  God  keepeth  himself,  and  that  wicked 
one  toucheth  him  not. 

"And  we  know  that  the  Son  of  God  is  come,  and  hath 
given  us  an  understanding,  that  we  may  know  him  that  is 
true,  and  we  are  in  him  that  is  true,  even  in  his  Son  Jesus 
Christ.    This  is  the  true  God,  and  eternal  life. 

"Him  that  overcometh  will  make  a  pillar  in  the  temple  of 
my  God,  and  he  shall  go  no  more  out:  and  I  will  write  upon 
him  the  name  of  my  God,  and  the  name  of  the  city  of  my 
God,  which  is  New  Jerusalem,  which  cometh  down  out  of 
heaven  from  my  God:  and  I  will  write  upon  him  my  new 
name. " 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


"After  that  day  ye  shall  know  that  I  am  in  the  Father,  and 
ye  in  me  and  I  in  you." — St.  John  14.:  30. 

In  the  world  of  scientific  discovery,  there  is 
nothing  that  is  quite  so  important  as  the 
discovery  of  self.  We  are  very  much  con- 
cerned about  discovering  new  continents, 
new  planets  and  North  and  South  Poles; 
rarely  ever  do  we  bestow  a  thought  upon 
the  greatest  of  all  these  discoveries,  which 
is  the  discovery  of  that  which  constitutes  the 
reality  of  man. 

We  seem  to  have  innumerable  selves.  In 
fact,  modern  psychology  speaks  of  multiple 
personalities.  Every  man  seems  to  be  a 
duality  of  selves  at  least.  In  some  instances, 
as  in  the  instance  of  Sarah  Beauchamp,  we 
have  what  we  call  a  trinity  of  personalities, 
but  there  is  in  all  of  us  a  veritable  gallery  of 
personalities.  Sometimes  I  am  reminded  of 
[35] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


this  when  I  look  in  shop  windows  and  see  a 
photograph  of  the  same  individual  taken  evi- 
dently at  the  same  time  in  various  positions. 
One  looks  at  us  directly,  another  casts  a  side- 
long glance  at  us  and  another  has  its  back 
quite  turned  to  us.  This  is  one  of  the  tricks 
of  modern  photography.  We  see  seated  at  a 
table  the  same  individual,  but  it  looks  like  a 
veritable  host  of  individuals.  And  so  it  is 
with  this  strange  thing  that  we  call  the  hu- 
man self,  a  'peculiar  mixture  of  moods,  emo- 
tions, temperaments,  sensations.  We  speak 
of  ourselves  as  being  ill  one  day  and  well  an- 
other. We  speak  of  ourselves  as  being  ca- 
pable of  doing  almost  anything  one  day, 
and  the  next  day  we  are  quite  incapable  of 
doing  anything  at  all.  Surely  these  con- 
cepts of  self — which  is  all  they  are,  by  the 
way— cannot  bear  any  real  relation  to  the 
self  that  is.  When  all  of  these  selves  are 
paraded  before  our  mental  vision,  when  we 
sit  on  the  reviewing  stand  of  divine  Intel- 
ligence and  see  these  varied  selves  of  ours 
that  pass  in  review  before  us,  we  are  inclined 
to  smile  because  they  are  so  peculiarly  un- 
[36] 


SELF-DISCOA'ERY 


like  what  we  want  ourselves  to  be.  The  self 
of  yesterday  is  not  the  self  of  to-day;  the 
self  of  to-day  is  not  the  self  of  to-morrow; 
the  self  of  our  childhood,  of  our  adolescence, 
youth  and  earl}^  manliood  is  a  something 
upon  which  we  look  back  very  frequently 
with  regret  and  wish  that  we  might  recall  a 
great  many  of  the  things  that  the  self  of 
those  days  thought  and  did.  The  self  of 
to-morrow,  with  its  suggestions  of  old  age 
and  weakness,  is  not  the  self  that  we  like 
to  think  about.  And  yet,  all  of  these  to- 
gether seem  to  form  the  composite  photo- 
graph of  the  real  you. 

What  is  it  that  sits  in  judgment  upon  all 
of  these  varied  and  various  selves?  Is  it 
not  you,  you,  your  own  very  self?  Are  you 
not  the  reviewing  judge,  because  back  of  all 
these  varied  phenomena  of  the  self,  there 
you  sit  calmly  enthroned  thinking  about  the 
days  of  your  infancy,  youth,  middle  life,  if 
you  happen  to  be  getting  along  in  years,  or 
perhaps  thinking  of  the  time  in  your  middle 
life  when  you  will  be  that  which  you  desire 
to  be,  or  perhaps  dreaming  of  what  you  de- 
[37] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


sire  to  be  in  old  age;  all  of  these  selves  are 
paraded  before  you  for  your  own  examina- 
tion and  review  and  criticism,  if  you  please. 

Surely  the  self  as  knower  must  be  some- 
thing different  from  the  self  as  known,  the 
self  as  knower  must  be  something  different 
from  that  which  the  self  seems  to  be,  because 
the  self  which  seems  to  be  is  little  more 
than  merely  physical,  a  body,  if  you  please, 
with  a  mysterious  Soul  supposedlj^  inside  of 
it,  but  back  of  all  tliis  strange  parade  of 
your  own  multiple  personalities,  there  you 
are,  the  quiet,  thoughtful,  and  I  may  say, 
dignified  spectator  of  the  whole  phantasma- 
goria. It  is  you  who  are  passing  judgment 
upon  the  whole  situation. 

And  what  is  this  you,  for  the  necessity  of 
self -discovery  leads  up  to  this  giant  inquiry 
— What  am  I?  Where  am  I?  Whence 
came  I?  Whither  go  I? — these  are  the 
questions  which  always  perplex  the  inquir- 
ing soul.  They  never  trouble  the  stupid 
person.  They  never  trouble  the  confirmed 
inebriate.  Nor  do  they  ever  trouble  the 
chronic  idiot.  They  are  the  questions  which 
[38] 


SELF-DISCOYERY 


are  always  agitating  the  soul  of  him  who 
would  know,  because  he  is  the  knower.  He 
must  know  what  he  is ;  not  what  he  has  been, 
not  what  he  is  going  to  become,  but  what  he 
is,  because  this  the  science  of  ontology  in- 
sists upon.  In  this  it  differs  from  the  sci- 
ence of  evolution.  In  this  it  differs  from 
the  science  of  immortality  or  theology.  The 
science  of  ontology  demands  that  a  man 
know  not  what  he  has  been  in  a  past  incar- 
nation, not  what  he  is  going  to  become  in  a 
future  incarnation,  but  what  he  really  is  to- 
day, this  moment,  now;  he  must  know  him- 
self. The  oracle  of  old  is  just  as  new  as  it 
ever  was — know  thyself. 

What  is  the  most  popular  concept  of  self? 
Is  it  not  that  of  one  who  apparently  comes 
out  of  nothing  into  visibility  and  disappears 
again  out  of  something  into  invisibility?  Is 
it  not  that  of  a  mortal  who  dances  across  the 
stage  of  human  experience,  entering  by  one 
wing  and  making  its  exit  by  another,  ap- 
plauded perhaps  or  hissed,  as  the  case  may 
be,  according  to  its  successes  or  its  failures, 
approved  or  condemned  according  to  its 
[39] 


SELF-DISCOVEEY 


successes  or  its  failures — and  this  by  the  self 
as  knower? 

It  is  very  evident  that  if  we  are  to  suc- 
ceed in  life,  that  if  we  are  to  rise  above  the 
limitations  of  sense  and  time  and  trouble, 
we  must  come  to  a  larger  and  a  more  com- 
plete understanding  of  what  we  are,  because 
no  man  can  know  his  capacities,  his  capa- 
bilities, until  he  knows  what  he  himself  is. 
And,  when  he  knows  what  he  himself  is, 
then  begins  the  slow,  gradual  ascent  above 
what  we  call  personal  limitations,  because 
when  the  individual  comes  into  a  conscious- 
ness of  the  reality  of  himself,  then  does  he 
discover  his  potential  powers,  then  does  he 
realise  his  unity  with  that  great  Self  of  the 
universe  which  is  God. 

The  unity  of  man  with  God  is  not  a  new 
truth.  It  may  be  a  new  thought  to  some 
of  us  to-day,  but  a  new  truth — not  at  all. 
It  was  emphasised  in  the  Upanishad  long 
before  the  birth  of  Jesus.  It  was  reem- 
phasised,  reiterated  and  demonstrated, 
which  is  better,  by  Jesus.  The  recognition 
of  man's  unity  with  God  is  the  basis  of  all 
[40] 


SELF-DISCOTEKY 


success.  It  is  the  very  foundation-stone  of 
al]  that  is  great  and  noble  and  worth  while 
in  this  world.  The  stream  of  consciousness 
upon  which  floats  all  the  good,  bad  and  in- 
different experiences  of  the  individual  is 
not  the  self,  the  body  is  not  the  self;  nay, 
the  mind  is  not  the  self.  The  body,  which 
has  repeatedly  changed  itself,  according  to 
physiolog}',  which  is  not  the  self  that  it  was 
last  year,  which  is  assuredlj^  not  the  self 
that  it  was  in  youth  or  childhood  or  before 
birth;  the  body,  which,  according  to  physi- 
olog\%  has  put  off  every  cell  of  itself  during 
the  past  eleven  months,  surely  this  is  not  the 
self.  The  evanescent,  the  ever-moving,  the 
ever-appearing  and  disappearing,  surely 
this  is  not  the  self.  And  yet,  how  many 
people  think  of  it  as  the  self,  look  upon  it  as 
the  self,  regard  their  state  of  life  and  health 
and  strength  by  what  they  call  bodily  condi- 
tions, judging  themselves  by  the  bodily  ap- 
pearances, doing  exactly  what  Jesus  said 
man  should  not  do. 

The  mind  is  not  the  self.    Why?  Be- 
cause the  mind  is  mutable,  the  mind  is  torn 
[41] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


between  its  varied  and  various  emotions, 
now  filled  with  fear  and  terror  and  again 
with  courage,  and  hope,  and  strength;  now 
pure,  again  impure;  now  thinking  aesthetic, 
spiritual  thoughts,  to-morrow  vulgar  and 
unspiritual  ones ;  at  the  mercy  of  every  wind 
that  blows,  whether  it  be  a  doctrinal  wind  or 
a  wind  of  adversity  or  pleasure.  Surely  this 
is  not  the  self! 

Self-discovery  consists  in  getting  back  of 
the  body,  getting  back  of  the  mind  which 
forms  the  body,  to  the  divine  Reality,  to  that 
immutable  Center  which  is  always  one  with 
the  great,  changeless  Self  of  the  world. 
When  Jesus  said,  "I  and  my  Father  are 
one,"  the  vulgar  people  of  his  day  did  not 
understand  him,  because  it  requires  ears  to 
hear;  that  is,  it  requires  spiritual  perception 
to  take  in  such  a  wonderful  spiritual  truth. 
In  like  manner,  the  vulgar  of  to-day  do  not 
understand  it.  The  "I"  of  you  is  indeed  one 
with  the  Father,  because  it  is  that  which  has 
never  known  sin,  has  never  known  sickness, 
which  is  the  direct  consequence  of  sin ;  it  has 
never  known  anything  but  that  which  is 
[42] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


true;  it  is  incapable  of  beholding  anything 
but  the  brightness  of  its  own  glory.  It  is 
like  the  sun;  it  sees  only  that  upon  which 
its  vision  rests.  It  never  beholds  the  shad- 
ows of  fear  or  failure,  sin  or  sickness.  It 
is  always  serene  with  the  serenity  of  the 
great,  universal  Self.  It  is  not  to  be  touched, 
as  the  ancients  said,  by  fire  or  flood.  It  is 
that  center  of  man's  being  which  is  ever  the 
same,  like  God,  yesterday  and  to-day  and 
forever.  Until  we  find  ourselves  as  a  spir- 
itual entity,  subject  neither  to  birth,  growth, 
maturity  nor  decay,  we  shall  never  know 
the  self,  we  shall  ever  speculate  about  the 
self  and  that  w^ill  appear  to  be  the  self  which 
is  not;  we  shall  be  self-conscious,  self-con- 
demnatory, self-approving,  and  all  of  the 
time  that  which  we  condemn  and  approve 
will  not  be  the  self  at  all,  but  the  shadow 
cast  by  our  wrong  thinking ;  the  Self  in  real- 
ity remains  ever  the  same. 

The  self  is  never  found  by  looking  out- 
side. The  self  is  ever  found  by  entering  into 
the  great  within.    It  is  not  enough  that  we 
quiet  bodily  emotions,  it  is  not  enough  that 
[43] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


we  subdue  bodily  twitchings,  it  is  not 
enough  that  we  quiet  turbulent  thought, 
though  these  are  the  necessary  steps  leading 
to  the  great  valley  of  silence.  The  silence  is 
not  the  control  of  the  body  nor  the  control 
of  thoughts  by  mental  forces  or  powers  quite 
so  much  as  it  is  the  deep,  tranquil,  self-con- 
scious communion  with  God.  Out  of  this 
and  through  this  and  by  this  the  mind  be- 
comes tranquil  and  serene  and  the  body  re- 
sponds to  it  in  terms  of  health  and  joy,  glad- 
ness and  power. 

Self -discovery  is  the  most  essential  thing 
in  the  universe.  Of  what  avail  is  it  that  we 
discover  new  planets,  that  we  find  the  North 
Pole,  of  what  avail  is  it  that  we  discover  oil, 
precious  pearls  in  the  sea  and  rubies  in  the 
mines?  Of  what  avail  is  it  that  we  convince 
ourselves  that  Mars  is  inhabited,  if  we  have 
no  spiritual  sense  of  self?  "For  what  shall  it 
profit  a  man,"  said  Jesus,  "if  he  shall  gain 
the  whole  world  and  lose  his  own  soul?" 
Soul  means  spiritual  self.  What  doth  it 
profit  a  man,  indeed,  if  he  acquire  all  the 
things  of  earth  and  all  the  joys  of  the  ortho- 
[  44  ] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


dox  heaven,  if  he  doesn't  know  himself  and 
his  capacities  and  capabilities?  Of  what 
avail  is  it?  What  pleasure  would  an  idiot 
find  in  heaven  ?  What  pleasure  would  a  sick 
man  find  in  the  orthodox  heaven?  All  of  the 
joy  and  all  the  gladness  and  all  the  peace 
and  power  in  the  universe  consists  in  finding 
one's  self. 

And,  when  the  self  is  found,  what  do  we 
find?  We  find  God,  because  the  discovery 
of  self  is  really  the  discovery  of  God.  The 
reality  of  one  is  the  reality  of  the  other, 
and  herein  lies  the  explanation  of  these 
wonderful,  mystic  words  of  Jesus,  at  that 
day,  at  that  day  when  your  eyes  are  opened 
to  the  facts  of  Divine  Science,  at  that  day 
when  Truth  dawns  upon  your  awakened 
consciousness,  ye  shall  know,  know  beyond 
peradventure,  know  beyond  the  shadow  of 
a  doubt,  "that  I  am  in  the  Father  and 
the  Father  in  me,"  I  in  you,  ye  in  me  and 
we  in  all.  Here  is  the  mystic  statement  of 
the  inseverability  of  Realities.  Here  is  the 
mystic  utterance  of  one  who  knew  that  cause 
and  effect  and  consequence  are  inseparable 
[45] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


as  is  the  sun  and  the  light  and  the  warmth 
thereof. 

Man  cannot  exist  without  God,  and  may 
I  say  without  being  accused  of  blasphemy, 
that  God  cannot  exist  without  man?  Ef- 
fect cannot  exist  without  cause  and  neither 
can  cause  exist  without  effect.  The  Father 
cannot  exist  without  the  Son;  neither  can 
the  Son  exist  without  the  Father.  Here  is 
the  inseparability  of  God  and  man  and  the 
faculties  and  functions  of  the  individual. 
When  this  truth  concerning  the  self  becomes 
more  apparent  to  human  consciousness,  we 
shall  see  how  impossible,  how  utterly  and 
absolutely  impossible  it  is  for  anything  to 
injure  the  self.  In  moments  of  temptation, 
it  will  be  the  gi-and  safeguard  against  diffi- 
culties, against  pains,  against  perplexities; 
in  moments  of  temptation,  when  the  tempta- 
tion always  comes  to  believe  that  self  can  in 
some  wise  be  injured  by  some  one  else,  by 
something  else,  by  some  event  or  prospec- 
tive calamity,  when  the  temptation  comes  to 
believe  that  the  self  can  become  ill,  poor  and 
die — then  arises  this  wonderful  conscious- 
[46] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


ness  that  says  to  the  individual,  the  self  is 
superior  to  all,  the  self  is  greater  than  all  the 
selves  that  are  paraded  before  us,  because, 
after  all,  these  are  nothing  more  nor  less 
than  more  or  less  imperfect  concepts  of  what 
the  self  really  is. 

We  can  conceive  of  ourselves  as  hu- 
man beings,  mortal,  mutable,  and,  accord- 
ing to  our  conception,  we  are,  because  verily, 
as  a  man  thinketh  in  his  heart  so  must  he  be 
in  his  external  manifestations.  We  can  con- 
ceive of  ourselves  as  going  through  all  the 
ramifications  of  human  experience.  We 
are  born,  we  go  to  school,  we  graduate,  we 
go  into  the  great  university  of  hard  knocks, 
we  suffer  all  kinds  of  tribulations  and  temp- 
tations, and  then  we  marvel  about  what  is 
going  to  become  of  us  after  death.  All  of 
these  are  speculations,  foolish  speculations, 
based  upon  foolish  concepts  of  what  the  self 
really  is.  The  old  oracle,  "Know  thyself," 
was  not  amiss,  after  all,  because  to  know 
the  self  does  not  lessen  man's  vigorous  pur- 
suits of  knowledge  along  other  legitimate 
lines.  It  would  not  interfere  with  Peary 
[47] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


going  after  the  North  Pole.  It  would  not 
interfere  with  the  legitimate  pursuit  of 
wealth.  It  would  not  interfere  with  the  le- 
gitimate pursuit  of  pleasure.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  would  add  zest  to  inquiry.  It  would 
add  to  discovery  strength  and  not  fatigue. 
Men  would  pursue  all  their  legitimate  in- 
vestigations through  the  knowledge  of  what 
the  self  really  is  with  greater  power.  We 
should  increase  not  only  in  heavenly  Truth 
but  in  worldly  wisdom  that  is  not  illegiti- 
mate. As  the  soul  expands  in  the  di- 
rection of  its  own  realit}^  the  intellect  also 
expands  as  a  natural  consequence.  But  how 
many  men  have  developed  the  intellect  at 
the  expense  of  the  soul!  By  the  soul,  I 
mean  the  self,  the  self  that  is  at-one  with 
God.  If  we  could  always  keep  before 
us,  and  may  I  say  we  can — I  use  the 
word  if  because  it  has  been  a  habit  with 
most  of  us  to  feel  that  we  can't  always  retain 
a  spiritual  consciousness  of  ourselves,  that 
we  must  occasionally  go  down  into  the 
depths, — we  7nust  from  time  to  time  be  im- 
pressed by  one  or  many  of  these  varied 
[48] 


SELF-DISCOA^RY 


selves  of  ours  that  parade  before  our  vision 
like  ghosts  of  the  night.  This  is  not  so,  how- 
ever, because  there  is  a  science,  which,  like 
all  other  sciences,  requires  concentration, 
which  will  enable  the  individual  to  rest  sub- 
limely, serenely,  comfortably  in  the  thought 
of  the  reality  of  self  as  a  spiritual  entity. 

Some  say  this  is  altogether  too  idealistic, 
that  this  philosophy  is  quite  apt  to  take  an 
individual  out  of  the  world  of  common  af- 
fairs, that  this  is  quite  apt  to  make  a  man 
an  impractical  visionaiy.  My  dear  friends, 
it  doesn't  make  an  automobile  less  useful  be- 
cause you  see  that  the  tank  is  filled  with 
gasoline  and  that  the  machinery  is  in  good 
running  order.  It  doesn't  make  machinery 
in  a  factory  less  useful  because  j^ou  take  ex- 
cellent care  of  it  and  govern  it  from  below 
in  the  engine-house.  It  ought  not  to  make 
an  individual  less  useful  in  the  world  because 
he  is  able  persistently  to  contemplate  his 
reality,  his  divinity.  On  the  contrary,  is  it 
not  the  storehouse  of  refreshment?  Is  not 
the  great  Self  understood  a  reservoir  of 
strength  and  power  and  majesty  and  sub- 
[49] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


limity?  Is  it  not  to  this  that  you  turn  in  a 
moment  of  fatigue  for  refreslmient,  in  a  mo- 
ment of  sickness  for  health,  in  a  moment  of 
temptation  for  a  power  of  resistance?  Is 
it  not  to  this  always  that  you  turn?  In 
some  mysterious  way,  we  seem  to  feel,  long 
before  we  come  into  the  larger  study  of 
things,  that  all  of  this  that  is  transpiring 
on  the  surface  is  not  us.  The  we  of  us, 
the  m  of  the  you  of  you  and  the  /  of 
myself  seems  to  reason  about  all  of  these 
experiences,  and  we  sometimes  ignorantly 
or  instinctively  arrive  at  the  conclusion 
that  these  are  no  more  a  true  part  of 
our  being  than  is  the  wart  upon  the  hand, 
— an  excrescence,  a  sediment  that  is  gather- 
ing in  the  water  of  life,  a  something  that  is 
interrupting  and  interfering  with  our  nat- 
ural progi'ess.  But,  heretofore,  in  our  ig- 
norance we  have  come  to  the  belief  that  this 
was  just  as  natural  as  the  other  part  of  it, 
that  sickness  is  just  as  natural  as  health. 
You  can't  be  well  always,  says  one ;  and  the 
great  majority  say,  "But  you  must  die  some- 
time or  other."  How  persistently  we  have 
[5.0] 


1 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


argued  for  the  necessity  of  death!  And  yet 
Jesus  said,  "If  a  man  believe  on  me,  he  shall 
never  taste  death."  Was  he  speaking  of 
the  physical?  Ah!  there  is  the  thing,  you 
see.  IMy  dear  friends,  when  you  come  into 
the  larger  idea  of  the  self,  the  physical  dis- 
appears; the  spiritual  is  all.  When  this 
fuller  thought  of  man's  individuality,  of 
man's  true  ego  dawns  upon  your  conscious- 
ness, the  physical  disappears  just  as  does 
your  old  garment, — you  no  longer  think  of 
the  physical ;  you  live  in  the  spiritual. 

All!  says  one,  if  you  live  always  in  the 
spiritual,  the  body  is  quite  apt  to  suffer  from 
neglect.  For  centuries  men  have  bestowed 
the  greatest  care  upon  the  body,  and  yet  it 
has  died,  not  from  neglect  but  from  over- 
care.  We  have  pandered  to  it.  We  have 
patted  it  and  comforted  it.  The  flesh  prof- 
iteth  nothing.  The  flesh  doesn't  give  life 
to  the  Spirit.  The  very  reverse,— "the 
spirit  that  quickeneth"  is  the  deep,  under- 
lying conviction  of  the  individual  that 
the  all  of  him  from  center  to  circum- 
ference is  purely  spiritual.  That  is  what 
[51] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


makes  him  immune,  which  renders  him  su- 
perior to  the  elements.  He  says  of  himself, 
"I  am  spiritual  through  and  through;  I  am 
not  physical  and  subject  to  physical  laws. 
The  law  of  the  spirit  of  life  in  Christ  Jesus 
hath  made  me  free  from  the  law  of  sin  and 
disease  and  death."  He  takes  refuge  in  the 
great  truth  that  his  self,  his  real  self  is  di- 
vine, not  mortal;  spiritual  not  material. 

The  discovery  of  the  self,  then,  you  see,  is 
not  the  least  important  discovery  in  the 
world.  Yea,  though  we  discover  all  the 
planets  in  the  planetary  system,  though  we 
discover  all  the  pearls  in  the  sea  and  all  the 
rubies  in  the  mine  and  all  the  oil  in  the  land 
and  all  of  the  new  continents,  and  strange, 
mysterious  hemispheres,  and  we  do  not  find 
ourselves,  of  what  avail  is  it?  No  wonder 
that  Jesus,  that  simple  man  who  reduced 
all  these  great  complexities  of  life  to  simple 
utterances,  said,  "what  shall  it  profit  a  man, 
if  he  gain  the  whole  world,"  of  what  advan- 
tage is  it;  naked  we  came  into  it,  naked  we 
shall  go  out  of  it.  Why  lay  so  much  stress 
on  this  little  song  and  dance  on  the  vaude- 
[52] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


ville  stage  of  human  experiences,  coming  in 
at  one  wing  and  going  out  at  the  other? 
Why  emphasise  it?  It  isn't  all  there  is  of 
being.  It  isn't  all  there  is  of  self.  It  isn't 
anything  of  being.  It  isn't  anything  of  self. 
It  is  the  great  illusion,  and  yet  it  is  so  real 
to  the  majority,  and  because  it  is  so  real  we 
suffer,  we  sicken,  we  die.  Because  it  is  so 
real,  we  minister  to  what  we  call  the  body, 
its  passions,  its  pains — they  are  all  catered 
to,  loved  and  feared.  And  all  of  the  time 
the  self,  as  Emerson  puts  it,  "lies  there 
stretched  in  smiling  repose,"  watching  the 
great  procession  of  things  and  not  paying 
any  attention  particularly.  The  self  of  you 
is  mighty  and  the  self  of  you  is  in  God;  the 
self  of  God  is  in  you.  The  self  of  God  and 
you  are  in  your  neighbor,  and  the  self  of 
your  neighbor  is  in  you  and  in  God.  There 
is  only  one,  Supreme  Self  in  the  universe.  It 
can  neither  sin,  suffer  nor  be  sick.  It  is 
never  born,  never  grows,  never  matures, 
never  dies.  It  is  always  the  same,  and  it  is' 
this  which  sits  in  judgment  upon  that  which 
comes  into  birth,  grows,  matures  and  dies. 
[53] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


It  is  that  which  sits  the  silent,  observant  wit- 
ness of  a  lot  of  foolishness. 

What  are  you?  According  to  one  sys- 
tem, you  are  mud,  made  of  the  dust  of  the 
ground,  a  soul  breathed  into  your  nostril. 
According  to  another  system,  you  are  mind. 
Well,  you  may  take  j^our  choice.  No  man, 
when  the  question  is  put  squarely  up  to  him, 
wants  to  be  mud.  No  man,  when  he  thinks 
seriously  about  himself,  wants  to  think  that 
he  is  confined  to  a  mortal  body  subject  to 
mortal  laws.  When  you  present  the  picture 
of  the  divine  self,  which  is  the  only  self,  to 
an  individual  and  his  eyes  are  opened  so  that 
he  can  see  what  you  are  showing  to  him,  then 
he  says,  "This  is  the  idea  of  self  I  want.  I 
want  the  self  that  is  forever  indissolubly 
connected  with  God.  I  want  the  self  that 
never  varies.  I  want  the  self  that  realises 
all  the  beauty  and  harmony  and  health  and 
peace  and  joy  in  the  universe.  I  want  the 
self  that  can  never  be  severed  from  the  In- 
finite." We  all  do,  and  Divine  Science  has 
come  to  aid  us  in  the  discovery  of  this  most 
important  thing  in  the  imiverse. 

[54] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


When  you  are  tempted  to  think  of  j^our- 
self  as  being  sick,  hereafter  you  are  going  to 
ask  yourself  what  yourself  is,  and  then  you 
are  going  to  ask  if  that  self  is  divine,  the  im- 
age and  likeness  of  God,  the  reflection  of 
the  One  altogether  lovely.  You  are  going 
to  ask  yourself  if  that  self  which  is  the  only 
self  of  you  can  be  sick.  When  you  are 
tempted  to  sin,  you  are  going  to  ask  yourself 
if  that  self,  the  real  self,  the  immortal  self 
of  you,  is  subject  to  sin,  and  according  to 
your  answers,  so  will  it  be  done  unto  you, 
because  the  answers  will  be  in  accord  with 
Truth.  The  answer  will  be  that  you  are  not 
subject  to  sin,  sickness  nor  disease.  The  an- 
swer will  be  forever  and  always  that  as  the 
image  and  likeness  of  God,  you  are  perpet- 
ually the  same,  yesterday,  to-day  and  for- 
ever. Neither  youth  nor  old  age  can  affect 
you.  Nothing  can  by  any  means  hurt  you, 
and  that  is  what  Jesus  meant.  But,  the 
you  to  Jesus  meant  an  entirely  different 
thing  from  what  the  you  meant  to  most 
of  his  hearers.  The  you  to  most  of  them 
meant  that  which  is  constantly  shedding  it- 
[55] 


SELF-DISCOVERY 


self,  which  is  constantly  giving  itself  off, 
as  the  rattler  puts  off  its  skin  periodically, 
which  is  constantly  sloughing  away,  which  is 
not  the  same  one  day  physically  or  emo- 
tionally— that  was  the  idea  of  the  you  to 
most  of  the  people.  But  that  was  not  the 
thought  in  the  mind  of  Jesus  when  he  said, 
"Nothing  shall  by  any  means  hurt  you." 
He  meant  you  in  your  entirety, — spirit, 
soul  and  spiritual  body.  The  you  is  a 
most  important  thing.  Don't  let  us  forget 
it.  Let  us  spend  our  days,  aye,  our  nights  in 
finding  this  self  of  ours,  this  changeless  self 
which  ever  remains  the  same,  which  looks 
out  upon  the  selves  as  so  many  parodies  of 
itself.  Maintain  the  attitude  toward  all  of 
these  personal  selves  of  yours  that  you 
would  maintain  to  just  so  many  proofs  of 
the  photograph  of  yours  that  the  photogra- 
pher sends  home  to  you  to-day  or  to-morrow 
or  whenever  you  have  your  photograph 
taken.  This  you  accept;  that  you  reject. 
Why?  Because  you  say,  "That  is  not  my- 
self at  all.  It  isn't  a  bit  like  me."  That  is 
your  divine  privilege;  it  is  your  human 
[56] 


SELF-DISCOYERY 


privilege.  If  none  of  them  look  like  you, 
then  you  return  them  all  and  don't  give  an 
order.  If  none  of  these  concepts  of  your- 
self in  your  own  mental  art  gallery  measure 
up  to  your  idea  of  self,  put  them  out.  If 
the  proof  that  is  returned  to  you  from  the 
photographer  is  that  of  a  sickly  person,  put 
it  out  and  declare,  "I  myself  am  well,"  be- 
cause now  you  know  what  the  self  is.  This 
interpretation  of  the  self  is  neither  mystical 
nor  mysterious.  Neither  is  it  far-fetched. 
It  is  based  upon  exact  science.  It  is  based 
upon  the  discovery  of  what  the  self  really  is, 
and  when  it  finds  lodgement  in  human  con- 
sciousness, then  the  individual  becomes  a 
power,  a  minister  of  God  in  His  righteous- 
ness, a  self -healer  and  a  healer  of  other  men. 
No  longer  is  he  mystified  nor  misled  by  the 
things  which  appear  to  be,  because  always 
within,  in  the  center  of  his  soul,  there  is  the 
consciousness  of  himself  as  the  divine  idea. 
This  is  salvation ;  this  is  health,  healing,  har- 
mony. 


[57] 


LOVE 

The  shortest  definition  of  Love  is  given 
by  John  the  Disciple,  "God  is  love;  and 
He  that  dwelleth  in  love  dwelleth  in 
God."  Jesus  said,  "Greater  love  hath  no 
man  than  this,  that  a  man  lay  down  his  life 
for  his  friends."  John  15:  13.  How  do  we 
professing  Christians  apply  this  saving 
Love?  We  are  not  often  called  upon  to 
lay  down  our  lives  for  our  friends,  owing 
to  the  refining  influence  of  the  teachings  of 
him  who  did  this  very  thing.  How  often  do 
we  lay  down  the  simplest  things  in  life  for 
our  friends?  It  was  the  Samaritan  with 
Love  in  his  heart  who  was  neighbor  to  the 
man.  The  priest  and  the  Levite  had  love 
and  law  on  their  lips.  They  laid  it  down  as 
a  duty  to  be  performed  by  others,  but  they 
themselves  "passed  by  on  the  other  side." 
The  Samaritan  "laid  down  his  money  for 
the  care  and  keep  of  this  bruised  and  beaten 
stranger.  Love  is  not  a  something  to  be 
[58] 


LOVE 


confined  to  the  narrow  limitations  of  one's 
own  immediate  family  and  friends. 

Love  is  universal  in  its  adaptations  and  it 
is  only  when  we  try  to  limit  it  to  ourselves 
that  we  suffer.  Inverted  love  is  a  mental 
stiletto  by  which  we  ignorantly  and  uninten- 
tionally commit  mental  and  physical  suicide. 
Love  is  like  the  sun  in  one  respect,  for  it  is 
only  when  it  shines  out  from  itself  to  others 
that  it  can  be  said  to  be  performing  its  true 
function.  If  the  sun  could  shine  in  upon 
itself  as  men  become  self-centered  through 
self  love,  it  would  presently  become  self-ex- 
tinguished. 

The  true  nature  of  man  is  the  true  nature 
of  the  sun,  both  exist  for  the  purpose  of  ex- 
pressing the  highest  and  the  best,  but  the 
sun  never  does  what  man  is  constantly  do- 
ing, it  never  violates  its  true  nature. 

We  often  hear  it  said  that,  "There  is  little 
love  in  the  world,"  and  "What  the  world 
needs  is  more  love."  Really  there  is  an 
abundance  of  love  in  the  world,  and  the  only 
misfortune  is  that  it  is  not  properlj^  directed. 
We  love  things  instead  of  thoughts,  and 
[59] 


LOVE 


power  instead  of  people.  We  are  not  lack- 
ing in  love  quite  so  much  as  we  are  lacking 
in  wisdom  to  exercise  it  properly. 

We  pray  for  more  love  when  we  are  not 
giving  the  fullest  expression  to  the  love  we 
have.  We  suffer  from  suppression.  We 
stifle  our  best  and  noblest,  and  permit  our 
worst  and  most  ignoble  impulses  to  occupy 
the  field  of  consciousness,  and  then  we  won- 
der why  we  develop  physical  diseases.  We 
do  not  see  the  association  of  anger  and  apo- 
plexy. We  do  not  seem  to  realise  that  hate 
kills  the  hater,  and  that  we  die  of  the  poison 
which  our  animosities  have  generated  in  the 
system,  and  not  realising  these  facts  we  can- 
not understand  that  love  is  the  only  and  in- 
fallible remedy.  We  do  not  need  more  love 
any  more  than  we  need  more  electricity ;  all 
we  need  is  to  utilise  love  more  treely. 
When  electricity  began  to  be  used  exten- 
sively, learned  professors  wrote  long  articles 
on  the  possibility  of  its  exhaustion.  We 
were  told  that  the  commercialisation  of  this 
marvellous  force  was  devitalising  the  atmos- 
phere, and  that  it  was  only  a  question  of 
[60] 


LOVE 


time  when  plant  life  and  animal  life  would 
feel  the  awful  consequences.  Since  that 
time  it  has  been  used  and  is  now  being  used 
to  assist  plant  life  and  to  hatch  chickens, 
and  some  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  its  use 
through  mechanical  devices  will  destroy 
wrinkles,  restore  genuine  youth  and  produce 
longevity.  Electricians  tell  us  that  this 
marvellous  force  is  inexhaustible,  that  every 
demand  that  is  made  upon  it  only  creates 
a  vacuum  which  this  ever-present  force  has- 
tens to  fill.  A  wise  man  says:  "The  love 
we  give  is  the  love  we  keep." 

If  we  should  say  the  cash  we  give  is  the 
cash  we  keep,  we  should  have  some  difficulty 
digesting  the  statement,  and  yet  there  are 
those  who  can  testify  to  the  truth  of  this 
statement  also.  Jesus  said:  "Give,  and  it 
shall  be  given  you;  good  measure,  pressed 
down,  shaken  together  and  running  over, 
shall  men  give  into  your  bosoms:  for  what- 
soever ye  mete  it  shall  be  meted  unto  you 
again."  This  giving,  however,  must  be  done 
in  the  proper  spirit  if  we  would  receive  as 
much  again,  for  back  of  this  is  a  law  as  fixed 
[Gl] 


as  the  law  of  the  Medes  and  Persians,  which 
rewards  not  according  to  gifts  but  according 
to  godliness;  not  according  to  acts  but  ac- 
cording to  motives. 

Love  in  human  consciousness  serves  to 
enrich  the  soul  of  the  benefactor  while 
ministering  to  the  needs  of  the  body  of 
the  beneficiary.  The  highest  love  is  that 
wherein  it  is  seen  that  there  is  no  beneficiary 
but  the  benefactor.  This  Truth  is  seen  in 
those  words  of  Jesus,  "It  is  more  blessed  to 
give  than  to  receive."  "Love  doth  not 
behave  itself  unseemly."  It  is  kind  and 
courteous,  gentle,  and  easy  to  be  entreated. 
It  fears  not,  for  "Perfect  Love  casteth  out 
fear."  Where  Love  is,  fear  cannot  be,  and 
Love  is  the  omnipresent  God,  therefore  fear 
is  a  figment  of  the  imagination  and  the  nat- 
ural result  of  a  belief  in  the  presence  of 
something  apart  from  God.  True  love  is 
equivalent  to  true  knowledge,  or  a  knowl- 
edge of  Truth.  It  recognises  no  hate  nor 
anger,  no  lust  nor  avarice.  It  sees  only  the 
brightness  of  its  own  character.  It  is  too 
pure  to  behold  iniquity,  too  chaste  to  indulge 
[62] 


in  unchastity.  Love  destroys  tumors  as  ef- 
fectually as  it  dries  tears.  It  rolls  away  the 
stone  from  the  sepulchre  of  discourage- 
ment and  disease,  and  the  individual  who  has 
been  entombed  through  and  by  spiritual  ig- 
norance walks  forth  into  "The  glorious  lib- 
erty of  the  Sons  of  God."  Have  you,  as 
student  of  Divine  INIetaphysics,  been  called 
forth,  as  was  Lazarus  of  old,  from  the  damp 
and  darkened  chamber  of  hopelessness  and 
helplessness?  If  so,  then  arise  to  your  re- 
sponsibilities. Let  the  grave-clothes  fall 
from  your  hands,  and  eyes,  and  feet  and  lis- 
ten to  the  final  injunction  of  Truth,  "Loose 
him,  and  let  him  go."  You  must  be  about 
your  Father's  business,  but  you  cannot  do 
this  if  you  are  bound  by  the  grave-clothes  of 
your  past  fears  and  limitations.  The  grave- 
clothes  of  reason  must  be  cast  aside,  "laid 
down"  in  the  presence  of  that  revelation 
which  bids  you,  "Go  ye  into  all  the  world 
(of  spiritual  ignorance  about  you)  and 
preach  the  Gospel  (of  the  AU-ness  of  God) 
to  every  creature."  These  signs  shall  follow 
you  if  you  believe  in  this  Allness.  "In  my 
[63] 


LOVE 


name  (in  the  name  of  omnipotent  Love) 
shall  they  cast  out  devils  (all  seeming  evil)  ; 
they  shall  speak  with  new  tongues  (the 
tongues  of  the  learned  in  Divine  Meta- 
physics ) .  They  shall  take  up  serpents,  and 
if  they  drink  any  deadly  thing  it  shall  not 
hurt  them;  they  shall  lay  hands  on  the  sick 
and  they  shall  recover."  So,  then,  after  the 
greatest  expression  and  expressor  of  Love 
this  world  has  ever  seen  had  given  these 
powers  unto  men  he  was  received  up  into 
heaven  (the  most  perfect  state  of  mental 
harmony)  and  sat  on  the  right  hand  of  God. 
That  is  to  say,  he  entered  into  such  a  glori- 
ous realisation  of  what  Love  is  as  to  make 
him  invisible  to  those  whose  knowledge 
of  Love  is  limited  and  carnal.  As  we  grow 
in  the  spirit  of  Love,  manifesting  it  in  the 
healing  of  the  sick  and  the  comforting  of  the 
sorrowing,  we  shall  grow  "unto  the  meas- 
ure of  the  stature  of  the  fullness  of  Christ." 
We  shall  see  Love  as  Love  is,  and  we  shall 
be  like  It  in  thought  and  deed,  here  and  now, 
"And  every  man  that  hath  this  hope  in  him 
purifieth  himself  even  as  he  (Love)  is  pure." 
[64] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 

"What  things  soever  ye  desire  when  ye  pray,  believe  ye 
have  received  them,  and  ye  shall  have  them. 
"Before  they  call,  I  will  answer. 

"If  any  of  you  lack  wisdom,  let  him  ask  of  God  that  giv- 
eth  to  all  men  liberally  and  upbraideth  not,  and  it  shall 
be  given  him. 

"But  let  him  ask  in  faith,  nothing  wavering.  For  he  that 
wavereth  is  like  a  wave  of  the  sea,  driven  with  the  wind 
and  tossed. 

"For  let  not  that  man  think  tha+  he  shall  receive  any- 
thing from  the  Lord. 

"If  ye  shall  ask  anything  in  my  name,  I  will  do  it. 

"For  your  Father  knoweth  what  things  ye  have  need  of 
before  you  ask  him. 

"The  prayer  of  faith  shall  save  the  sick,  and  the  Lord 
will  raise  him  up. 

"And  if  he  have  committed  sins,  they  shall  be  forgiven 
him. 

"Be  careful  for  nothing,  but  in  everything  by  prayer  with 
thanksgiving,  let  your  requests  be  made  known  to  God. 

"The  effectual,  fervent  prayer  of  the  righteous  man  avail- 
eth  much. 

"Father,  I  thank  thee  that  thou  hast  heard  me,  and  I 
know  that  thou  hearest  me  always." 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


"Therefore  I  say  unto  you  that  what  things  soever  ye  de- 
sire, when  ye  pray,  belie%e  that  ye  receive  them,  and 
ye  shall  have  them." — Maek  11:24. 

James,  the  Apostle,  in  his  wonderful  epistle 
says:  "Is  any  man  sick  among  you,  let  him 
call  in  the  elders  of  the  church,  and  the 
prayer  of  faith  shall  save  the  sick."  You 
will  notice  that  James  says  "shall  save  the 
sick."  He  does  not  say  may,  as  we  would 
to-day,  but  he  makes  a  positive  statement, 
■ — "the  prayer  of  faith  shall  save  the  sick." 

History  records  that  for  something  like 
three  hundred  years  immediately  after  the 
beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  prayer  was 
accredited  a  therapeutic  value  that  it  never 
had  before,  and  with  which  it  has  never  been 
credited  since.  Through  ignorance  of  the 
facts  many  people  feel  that  all  spiritual 
healing  by  the  power  of  prayer  w^as  limited 
to  Jesus  and  his  immediate  disciples.  So 
[67] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


they  constantly  declare  that  the  age  of  mira- 
cles is  past,  meaning  by  this  that  healing 
by  purely  spiritual  means,  if  it  ever  was 
successfully  practised,  has  become  a  lost 
art.  Or,  if  they  believe  the  Theologians,  de- 
clare that  God  never  intended  that  spiritual 
healing  should  go  on  tliroughout  the  ages; 
that  it  was  one  of  the  outward  or  visible 
manifestations  of  unseen  power  intended  by 
Jesus  to  usher  in  and  emphasise  the  new 
order  of  things,  the  new  dispensation.  This 
being  accomplished,  healing  by  prayer  was 
no  longer  necessary.  Eminent  divines  in 
all  churches,  and  we  think  Christians  in 
every  denomination,  through  strange  and 
faulty  reasoning  have  arrived  at  this  con- 
clusion:— that  spiritual  healing  was  merely 
an  impressive  method  used  to  make  people 
understand  the  new  dispensation,  and  that 
after  this  had  been  accomplished,  there 
would  be  no  longer  any  need  for  its  con- 
tinuance. 

In  fact,  it  seems  to  me  that  we  sometimes 
imagine  Christianity  to  have  been  ushered 
in  by  the  use  of  magic;  that  in  order  to 
[68] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


gather  an  audience,  Jesus  had  to  indulge 
in  a  few  spectacular  performances.  That  is 
the  idea  that  many  of  us  have  of  the  healing 
ministry  of  Jesus. 

It  never  seems  to  us  that  back  of  every 
healing  recorded  by  the  Nazarene,  there  is 
a  law.  We  seem  to  feel  that  in  some 
strange  and  supernatural  way  this  unusual 
Son  of  God  was  gifted  with  a  power  that 
no  other  man  in  human  history  has  ever  had, 
to  such  an  extent,  at  least. 

Divine  Science  has  come  to  take  the  very 
marked  hirnian  instinct  to  praj^  out  of  the 
external  and  the  occasional  and  to  plant  it 
in  the  soil  of  beautiful  expectancy.  We 
speak  of  the  instinct  of  prayer  and  of  man 
as  a  prajnng  animal.  We  seem  to  differen- 
tiate ourselves  from  the  beasts  by  this  par- 
ticular instinct,  the  instinct  of  prayer.  We 
say  we  have  it  and  the  animals  have  it  not. 
We  share  one  instinct  in  common  with  all 
animal  and  vegetable  life,  and  that  is  the 
instinct  of  self-preservation;  and  we  feel 
that  self-presen-ation,  so  far  as  the  human 
being  is  concerned,  is  daily  dependent 
[69] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


upon  prayer  and  the  prayerful  attitude  of 
man. 

And  yet  when  we  look  out  over  the  world 
and  hear  of  the  innumerable  prayers  going 
up  for  health,  strength,  harmony  and  sub- 
stance, we  are  prone  to  think  prayer  is  too 
infrequently  answered.  How  often  have  we 
seen  an  entire  nation  setting  apart  a  day 
for  itself  to  pray  for  the  life  of  a  beloved 
ruler  or  president,  threatened  with  death, 
that  he  might  be  spared  and  restored  to 
health  and  strength;  and  yet  he  passed  on 
like  any  other  man,  notwithstanding  the  fact 
that  the  accumulated  prayers  of  the  nation 
were  piled  up  for  his  recovery.  We  in  this 
country  see  this  too  often.  Then  over 
against  this  it  does  seem  as  though  the  bad 
man's  bullet  is  more  powerful  than  the  good 
man's  prayers.  It  does  seem  as  if  the  as- 
sassin has  more  power  to  rid  the  earth  of 
a  good  man  than  the  accumulated  prayers 
of  all  the  Christians  have  to  keep  him  here. 
These  questions  should  give  us  pause,  we 
think. 

Was  there  ever  at  any  time  in  the  history 
[70] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


of  the  human  mind,  a  firm  belief  in  the  po- 
tency of  prayer?  Was  there  ever  at  any 
time  on  the  part  of  men  a  sure  confidence 
that  their  prayers  would  indeed  be  heard? 
Why  should  our  prayers  be  so  infrequently 
answered,  and  why  should  the  prayers  of 
Jesus  and  his  immediate  disciples  have  been 
so  frequently  answered?  The  question  is, 
Did  Jesus  pray  differently?  Were  the 
prayers  of  Jesus  based  upon  a  different 
premise  from  our  own  prayers? 

You  remember  when  Jolm  the  Baptist's 
disciples  came  to  Jesus.  After  John  had 
been  cast  into  prison,  they  came  to  Jesus 
and  followed  him  and  watched  his  so-called 
miracles.  One  day  they  said  to  him,  "Mas- 
ter, teach  us  to  pray  as  John  taught  his  dis- 
ciples to  pray."  And  then  he  offered  up 
that  brief  and  wondrous  prayer  that  has 
ever  since  been  called  "The  Lord's  Prayer." 
A  prayer  which  we  unfortunately  very 
poorly  understand  because  part  of  it  has 
been  very  poorly  translated.  Toward  the 
end  of  the  prayer,  it  reads  as  if  Jesus  had 
asked  his  Heavenly  Father  not  to  lead  him 
[71] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


into  temptation.  You  remember  that  it 
reads  "Lead  us  not  into  temptation,  but  de- 
liver us  from  evil."  These  are  the  words 
as  they  appear  in  the  ordinary  version. 
They  are  not  so  in  the  original  text:  they 
are,  "Leave  us  not  in  temptation,  but  de- 
liver us  from  the  one  evil."  There  does  not 
seem  to  be  very  much  difference,  but  on  re- 
flection we  see  that  we  are  not  asking  God 
"not  to  lead  us  into  temptation."  We  are 
simply  asking  that  "we  be  not  left  in  temp- 
tation." The  temptation  is  not  from  God; 
the  temptation  is  from  other  sources,  other 
causes,  and  comes  mainly  from  within  our- 
selves. "Leave  us  not  in  temptation,  but 
deliver  us  from  the  one  evil."  That  "one 
evil"  became  translated  into  a  personal 
devil,  and  later  into  an  impersonal  evil. 
What  is  this  one  evil  ?  The  one  evil  is  man's 
belief  in  evil.  The  evil  of  believing  in  a 
power  opposed  to  the  omnipotence  of  God, 
the  evil  of  believing  in  a  personal  devil,  or 
an  impersonal  evil.  In  short,  it  is  the  one 
evil  of  believing  anything  that  is  not  truth. 
It  is  the  belief  in  a  supposed  power  press- 
[72] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


ing  ever  against  the  actual  power  and  pres- 
ence of  Almighty  God,  and  hence  we  can 
say  with  Jesus,  "Leave  us  not  in  tempta- 
tion, but  deliver  us  from  the  one  evil," — de- 
liver us  from  the  temptation  to  believe  that 
there  is  anything  but  God.  This  belief  is 
the  seed  and  the  root  upon  which  the  tree 
that  bears  such  wretched  fruit  flourishes. 

We  see  a  difference  between  the  prayers 
of  Jesus  and  those  of  John  the  Baptist. 
John  the  Baptist  petitions,  supplicates. 
Jesus  affirms.  And  it  is  in  this  way  that  we 
wish  to  speak  of  prayer, — ^that  is,  positive 
affirmation. 

When  Jesus  stood  at  the  tomb  of  Laz- 
arus, and  the  bereaved  sisters  of  Lazarus, 
Martha  and  Mary,  were  weeping  and  be- 
moaning the  fact  that  Jesus  had  not  come 
earlier,  feehng  confident  that  had  he  come 
earlier  their  brother  would  have  lived, — ^they 
said,  "If  thou  hadst  been  here,  my  brother 
had  not  died."  And  he  turned  unto  them 
and  said,  "Said  I  not  unto  thee,  he  that  be- 
lieveth  in  me,  though  he  be  dead,  yet  shall 
he  live?"  And  Martha  said,  "Yea,  I  know 
[73] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


that  he  shall  rise  again  in  the  resurrection, 
at  the  last  day."  It  seems  to  be  a  peculiar 
tendency  of  the  human  mind  to  postpone 
everything  to  the  resurrection  day,  the  last 
day,  the  judgment  day.  And  Jesus  turned 
to  Martha  and  said,  "I  am  the  resurrection 
and  the  life.  He  that  believeth  in  me, 
though  he  were  dead,  yet  shall  he  live." 
And  then  he  said,  "Father,  I  thank  thee  that 
thou  hast  heard  me,  and  I  know  that  thou 
hearest  me  always;  but  because  of  the  peo- 
ple which  stand  by,  I  said  it,  that  they  may 
believe  that  thou  hast  sent  me."  I  say, 
"Lazarus,  come  forth."  And  history  re- 
cords that  Lazarus  came  forth  bound  hand 
and  foot,  and  with  the  grave  clothes  about 
his  eyes. 

Jesus  adopted  a  method  the  very  reverse 
of  that  which  we  adopt.  He  thanked  God 
in  advance  for  his  blessings.  We  would 
have  waited  to  see  Lazarus  out  of  the  tomb 
and  the  bandages  removed  from  his  ankles 
and  his  eyes,  in  order  to  be  convinced  that 
truth  had  manifested  itself.  Jesus  says, 
"Whatsoever  things  ye  desire  when  ye  pray, 
[74] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


believe  that  ye  receive  them,  and  ye  shall 
have  them."  For  this  text  I  never 
found  any  satisfactory  explanation  in  Old 
Thought.  When  I  pray,  I  am  to  believe 
that  I  receive  what  I  desire.  Why  pray 
then?  Why  pray  if  I  believe  that  I  have 
already  received  what  I  desire?  In  the  Old 
Testament  we  read,  "Before  they  call  I  will 
answer;  and  while  they  are  yet  speaking,  I 
will  hear."  These  are  mystical  statements. 
Jesus  spoke  in  parables,  and  here  are  the 
parables  of  Jesus  with  no  convenient  Jesus 
to  interpret  them.  But  Divine  Science  is 
penetrating  beneath  the  surface  of  these 
marvellous  words  of  the  Master  and  discov- 
ering in  some  degree  at  least  their  hidden 
content.  In  Old  Thought  we  pray  for 
blessings  to  a  far-away  God,  which  bless- 
ings are  to  be  imported  to  us  from  a  place 
outside  of  ourselves,  a  far-away  heaven. 
We  beseech  God  to  be  merciful,  tender  and 
compassionate,  when  it  is  not  the  nature  of 
God  to  be  otherwise.  We  want  God  to 
shower  blessings  on  us,  to  give  us  health  and 
strength  and  wealth,  always  believing  that 
[75] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


these  are  to  come  from  outside  of  ourselves, 
never  believing  that  we  have  already  re- 
ceived them  as  the  soil  receives  the  seed  of 
the  oak  that  is  to  be;  never  really  under- 
standing that  it  is  within  our  power  to  work 
out  our  own  salvation.  And  when  I  say 
work  out,  I  mean  that  our  salvation  is 
within;  otherwise  we  could  not  work  it  out. 
Most  of  us  have  tried  to  work  it  in,  as  we 
work  in  an  oil  by  embrocation.  What  we 
have  to  do  is  to  work  it  out,  to  feel  con- 
scious that  within  us  is  the  power  to  over- 
come sin,  sickness,  poverty,  disease  and  even 
death  itself.  And  so  it  is  that  we  have  gone 
on  and  on  for  centuries  praying  to  an  ab- 
sentee God  to  work  out  our  salvation  for  us. 

In  Divine  Science  we  no  longer  petition, 
we  no  longer  supplicate,  but  this  does  not 
mean  that  we  no  longer  pray.  A  young 
minister  once  said  of  us  that  we  are  "a  pray- 
erless  people;"  because  we  no  longer  repeat 
litanies  and  rosaries,  or  make  genuflections 
or  go  through  the  rites  and  ceremonies  the 
older  churches  teach.  We  are  not  a  prayer- 
less  people,  though  we  are  a  people  who  no 
[76] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


longer  indulge  in  formulae.  If  he  knew  us 
better  he  would  not  saj^  that  we  are  a  pray- 
erless  people,  but  rather  that  we  pray  with- 
out ceasing,  that  we  are  constant  in  prayer, 
that  we  are  constantly  affirming  the  omnipo- 
tence, omniscience  and  omnipresence  of 
God,  for  it  is  the  affirmation  of  man's  unity 
with  his  maker.  And  I  take  it  that  this  was 
the  prayer  of  Jesus — ^the  deep  and  persist- 
ent affirmation  of  man's  unity  with  God. 

Quite  unlike  the  minister  of  to-day  or 
the  rabbi  of  his  day,  Jesus  rarely  knelt  in 
prayer.  We  are  somewhat  amazed  when 
we  read  the  little  narrative  of  the  calling 
forth  of  Lazarus,  to  discover  that  there  is 
no  reference  made  to  any  petition  whatso- 
ever. It  is  not  said  of  Jesus  that  he  knelt 
at  the  tomb  of  Lazarus  and  cried  out  in 
piteous  appeal  to  God  that  he  might  be  re- 
stored to  his  sisters,  to  whom  he  was  so  nec- 
essary. It  is  not  said  of  Jesus  that  he  asked 
those  around  him  to  unite  with  him  in 
prayer  for  the  restoration  of  life  to  Laz- 
arus. We  do  not  find  him  crying  unto  God 
to  be  merciful  and  comxpassionate  and  ten- 
[77] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


der  and  to  restore  this  youth  to  life  and 
vigour.  Telling  Mary,  "I  am  the  resurrec- 
tion and  the  life,  he  that  believeth  on  me, 
though  he  were  dead,  yet  shall  he  live  again," 
Jesus  prays,  "Father,  I  thank  thee  that  thou 
hast  heard  me,"- — remember  that  Lazarus 
was  still  in  the  tomb, — "Father,  I  thank  thee 
that  thou  hast  heard  me.  And  I  know  that 
thou  hearest  me  always,  but  because  of  the 
people  which  stand  by  I  said  it,  that  they 
might  believe."  Then  he  said,  "Lazams, 
come  forth."  And  Lazarus  came  forth. 
Soul  answereth  to  soul,  spirit  answer- 
eth  to  spirit,  and  audible  prayer  was 
as  far  removed  from  the  idea  of  prayer  in 
the  mind  of  Jesus,  as  the  North  is  from  the 
West  or  from  the  South.  We  find  little 
reference  made  to  audible  prayer  on  the  part 
of  Jesus.  His  prayers  were  those  silent 
contemplations  of  truth,  those  moments  and 
hours  of  silent  realisation  of  the  presence  of 
the  inworking  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The 
prayers  of  Jesus  were  too  big  for  words. 
Thc}'^  could  never  be  put  into  formulae.  I 
think  that  he  would  never  have  given  out 
[78] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


what  we  call  "The  Lord's  Prayer,"  were 
it  not  for  the  fact  that  his  disciples  asked 
for  a  formula,  as  we  to-day  ask  for  a 
formula. 

People  come  to  us  everj'  day  and  ask  us 
to  give  them  some  thought,  some  verbal 
statement.  Why?  Because  it  seems  to  be 
the  only  way  by  which  they  can  hold  on  to 
an  internal  truth;  to  have  an  external  af- 
firmation for  it,  an  audible  repetition  of 
the  words  seems  to  be  the  one  thing  by 
which  they  can  anchor  to  the  thing  they  most 
desire  to  bring  out.  So  Jesus  gave  them  this 
simple  prayer,  "Our  Father  which  art  in 
heaven,"  and  we  must  remember  that  Jesus 
had  told  his  disciples  where  heaven  is.  He 
had  told  them  that  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
is  within.  Now  you  know  that  the  natural 
tendency  of  the  twentieth  century  denomi- 
national christian  when  making  that  prayer 
is  to  think  of  something  far  away,  "Our  Fa- 
ther which  art  in  heaven:"  rarely  if  ever 
does  he  associate  in  his  own  mind  with  this 
remarkable  statement  the  idea  of  omnipres- 
ence. "Our  Father  which  art  in  heaven" — 
[79] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


Our  Father  which  art  away  off,  "hallowed 
be  thy  name;  thy  kingdom  come,"  and  he 
asks  that  this  kingdom  come  as  if  it  were 
some  strange  importation  from  another 
planet.  "Thy  kingdom  come" — thy  king- 
dom which  is  ever  resident  in  the  secret 
sanctuary,  hidden  in  every  longing  soul,  to 
be  manifested  in  the  external,  in  our  daily 
life.  Thy  will  be  done  in  the  objective 
kingdom  even  as  it  is  in  the  subjective 
kingdom. 

"Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread" — give 
us  strength  and  wisdom  and  understanding 
for  the  day.  This  has  no  reference  whatso- 
ever to  food.  "And  forgive  us  our  sins  as 
we  forgive  those  that  sin  against  us."  So 
underneath  all  we  are  to  be  forgiven  as  we 
forgive  others.  "Forgive  us  our  trespasses 
as  we  forgive."  We  are  to  be  forgiven  as 
wholly  and  just  in  proportion  as  we  forgive 
other  men.  That  is  the  law.  We  forgive 
ourselves  in  reality  in  the  degree  that  we  be- 
come forgiving. 

"And  lead  us  not  into  temptation," — 
leave  us  not  in  temptation,  but  deliver  us 
[80] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


from  the  one  evil, — from  the  belief  that 
there  is  anything  opposed  to  the  law  of  God. 
This  is  not  a  very  profound  interpretation 
of  the  Lord's  prayer,  but  it  is  better  to  my 
mind  than  the  other.  The  other  was  a 
prayer  of  postponement.  The  other  was  a 
prayer  that  led  me  to  feel  in  some  strange, 
inconceivable  way,  God  was  really  leading 
me  into  temptation  in  order  that  my  spir- 
itual muscles  might  be  strengthened.  Over 
against  this  we  have  those  remarkable  words 
of  James  the  Apostle.  "Let  no  man  say 
when  he  is  tempted,  I  am  tempted  of  God; 
for  God  cannot  be  tempted  with  evil, 
neither  tempteth  he  any  man:  But  every 
man  is  tempted  when  he  is  drawn  away  of 
his  own  lust,  and  enticed."  "Then  when  lust 
hath  conceived  it  bringeth  forth  sin;  and 
sin,  when  it  is  finished,  bringeth  forth 
death."  "God  tempteth  no  man."  Then 
why  ask  God  not  to  lead  us  into  temptation? 
What  would  you  think  of  your  own  child 
if  he  begged  you  every  day.  Please  don't 
lead  me  into  temptation,  Father  or  Mother? 
You,  who  are  desirous  onlv  for  his  spiritual, 
[81] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


mental,  moral  and  physical  welfare?  What 
would  you  think  if  your  own  child  made 
continually,  morning,  noon  and  night,  re- 
quests that  you  would  not  lead  him  into 
temptation?  You  would  wonder  if  he  were 
not  a  little  bit  touched!  You  have  no  de- 
sire to  do  anything  but  to  lead  him  into 
joy  and  happiness  and  strength  and  vigour 
and  manliness.  Is  it  not  amazing  that  for 
all  these  centuries  we  have  been  asking  God 
not  to  lead  us  into  temptation?  Is  it  not 
amazing  that  we  have  accepted  the  blind 
dictums  of  theological  leaders  without  ques- 
tion? The  blind  surelj^  have  led  the  blind. 
Our  teachers  have  been  blind  to  the  truth. 

Prayer  with  us  in  Divine  Science  is  not 
petition.  It  is  not  asldng  God  to  be  God. 
It  is  not  asking  Infinite  Life  to  be  anything 
other  than  what  It  is.  It  is  not  asking  God 
to  do  that  which  he  cannot  do,  namely: 
change  his  mind.  And  is  this  not  prayer 
as  it  was  taught  in  Old  Thought — an  almost 
continuous  performance  of  asking  God  to 
change  his  mind?  I  was  taught  that  many 
things  came  into  my  life  as  the  direct  result 
[82] 


PRAYER  IN  DIYINE  SCIENCE 


of  the  will  of  God,  and  then  I  was  taught  to 
ask  God  to  remove  these  things  or  to  change 
them,  and  I  always  ended  my  prayer  with 
"if  it  be  thy  will,'  O  God."  This  was  be- 
cause I  did  not  understand  what  Jesus 
taught  concerning  the  will  of  God.  It  was 
because  I  did  not  understand  concerning 
prayer.  I  was  taught  to  believe  that 
through  continuous  and  continual  prayer, 
I  could  change  the  unchangeable  will  of  the 
Almighty.  That  if  he  deemed  it  wise  and 
best  for  me  to  be  diseased  and  sickly  and 
sorrowfid  and  suffering,  I  could  hy  suffi- 
cient prayer,  and  sometimes  by  asking  the 
praj'ers  of  the  church,  bring  about  a  change 
in  this  supreme  immutable  will,  and  that 
which  God  originally  intended  to  do,  he 
would  not  do.  Is  it  not  ridiculous  that  we 
should  be  taught  in  theologj^  that  God  is 
immutable,  and  that  we  should,  at  the  same 
time,  think  or  believe,  and  even  communi- 
cate to  others  the  idea  that  the  immutable 
can  be  changed  by  persistent  petition,  when 
the  very  Bible  says,  "God  changeth  not." 
God  is  law;  immutable,  fixed,  irrevocable 
[83] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


law.  Not  all  the  petitions  ever  uttered  can 
change  the  will  of  God ;  but  we  must  know 
what  is  the  will  of  God.  Some  of  us  have 
been  told,  I,  for  instance,  that  it  was  the 
will  of  God  that  my  child  should  be  taken 
from  me,  and  I  accepted  and  believed  it.  I 
was  a  firm  believer  in  ecclesiastical  author- 
ity. I  believed  almost  everything.  Why? 
Because  I  had  been  taught  when  a  child  not 
to  argue  concerning  the  mysteries  of  the 
church.  That  if  certain  things  happened 
too  deep  for  my  shallow  mind  to  under- 
stand, I  must  accept  them  and  the  riddle 
would  be  solved  some  time,  perhaps  after 
death.  I  was  told  that  my  child  was  taken 
away  from  me  to  teach  me  a  lesson;  it  was 
the  will  of  God.  I  am  not  the  only  one 
who  has  been  told  this  story.  And  then  one 
day  I  found  in  the  New  Testament  these 
words  of  Jesus,  and  I  could  not  reconcile 
them  with  my  previous  teaching; — "It  is  not 
the  will  of  God  that  one  of  those  little  ones 
should  perish,  but  that  they  should  have 
everlasting  life."  I  have  no  doubt  that  the 
theologians  of  that  day  believed  that  it  was 
[84] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


the  will  of  God  that  Bartimeus  should  have 
been  born  and  remained  blind.  Consider 
for  a  moment  that  Jesus  came  here  ex- 
pressly to  do  the  will  of  the  Father;  this 
is  what  he  said,  "I  came  to  do  the  will  of 
my  Father  which  is  in  heaven,"  and  when 
Bartimeus  there  by  the  roadside  cried  out 
to  him,  "Jesus  of  Nazareth,  save  me,"  the 
disciples  said,  "You  are  making  too  much 
noise,  he  has  other  important  work  to  do, 
don't  bother  him."  And  he  cried  the  more, 
"Jesus  of  Nazareth,  save  me."  And  Jesus 
stopped  short  and  said  to  his  disciples, 
"What  does  he  want?"  They  answered,  "He 
is  crjnng  out  to  thee,  he  is  blind."  So  Jesus 
turned  back  and  asked  the  man,  "What 
would  you  have  me  to  do?"  Bartimeus  re- 
plied, "That  I  receive  my  sight."  Jesus  said, 
"Go  thy  way,  realise  that  God  is  the  sight  of 
your  eyes,  and  you  have  it.  It  is  yourself." 
He  did  not  pray  God  to  restore  sight.  He 
sunply  showed  the  man  inwardly,  by  spirit- 
ual contact,  that  he  was  then  manifesting 
that  sight,  that  inner  sight,  which  is  the  sight 
of  God,  and  he  saw.  Now  if  Bartimeus  was 
[85] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


blind  according  to  the  will  of  God,  and 
Jesus  came  to  do  the  will  of  his  Father,  is 
it  not  strange  that  Jesus  should  revoke  that 
which  is  so  popularly  believed  to  be  the  will 
of  God?  And  again,  if  it  be  the  will  of  God 
that  you  and  I  should  be  sick,  what  right 
have  we  to  pray  about  it  at  all?  Why  peti- 
tion God  for  recovery  or  restoration  to 
health  and  strength  when  perhaps  it  is  his 
will  that  we  should  be  weak  and  debilitated? 
I  never  saw  the  absurdity  of  these  things,  I 
never  saw  the  ridiculous  incongruity  of  them 
until  I  began  to  study  along  these  lines  and 
saw  that  the  will  of  God  is  not  a  mutable 
weather  cock  moved  about  by  the  petitions 
of  people  everywhere,  but  that  God  is  fixed, 
immutable  law,  and  that  law  is  Love.  So 
I  kept  on  praying  and  I  never  got  an  an- 
swer so  far  as  any  visible  evidences  were 
concerned.  And  this  history  is  not  peculiar 
to  myself,  I  am  sure.  Is  it  not  common 
experience?  How  are  we  going  to  solve 
this  difficulty?  Is  it  possible  that  we,  like 
the  disciples  of  old,  are  going  to  turn  to 
him  and  say,  "Lord,  teach  us  to  pray?" 
[86] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


We,  who  have  prayed  from  our  infancy  up, 
are  going  to  ask  to  be  taught  to  pray  in  such 
a  manner  as  to  receive  the  blessings  that 
were  promised  to  him  that  prayed  righteous- 
ly. We  must  become  as  little  children,  and 
learn  all  over  again.  As  a  little  child  I  was 
taught  to  pray  at  night,  so  were  you, — 

"Now  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep, 
I  pray  thee,  Lord,  my  soul  to  keep. 
If  I  should  die  before  I  wake, 
I  pray  thee.  Lord,  my  soul  to  take." 

That  gave  me  a  picture  of  a  God  that  was 
going  to  snatch  me  perhaps  during  the 
night,  and  sometimes  I  did  not  sleep  for 
fear  of  it.  That  was  the  Old  Thought. 
The  New  Thought  is  this: 

"Now  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep, 
I  know  that  God  his  child  doth  keep. 
I  know  that  God,  my  life,  is  nigh ; 
I  live  in  Him  and  cannot  die. 
God  is  my  health,  I  can't  be  sick. 
God  is  all  love,  unfailing,  quick. 
[87] 

i 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


God  is  my  all.   I  know  no  fear, 

Since  life  and  truth  and  love  are  here." 

My  dear  friends,  this  is  a  brief  way  of  de- 
fining the  difference  between  the  Old  and 
the  New  Thought  prayer.  One  is  the  sup- 
plicating, petitioning  kind,  which  asks  God 
not  to  do  something  to  us  wliich  he  has  no 
idea  of  doing;  the  other  is  the  same,  strong 
affirmation  of  the  great  triumphant  fact  that 
God  is  our  life  and  we  cannot  die,  that  God 
is  our  health  and  we  cannot  be  sick.  It  is 
the  assertion  of  the  real  over  against  the 
apparent.  It  is  the  affirmation  of  our  indis- 
soluble connection  with  all  that  is  good  and 
pure  and  permanent  and  changeless.  It  is 
a  different  order  of  prayer,  and  it  is  more 
gratifying. 

Now  the  question  arises  naturally,  and 
often  occurs  to  people  who  come  to  us  for 
help, — "If  this  is  effectual  prayer,  why  can- 
not I  pray  for  myself  and  get  well?"  How 
often  we  hear  thisl  I  have  no  doubt  the 
people  of  Jesus'  time  asked  the  same  ques- 
tions.  "If  the  only  method  by  wliich  Jesus 


PEAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


restored  the  sick  is  the  method  of  prayer, 
why  cannot  we  pray  just  as  well  as  he?" 
He  never  objected  to  it.  I  have  no  doubt 
he  said,  "You  can.  You  can  if  you  pray 
intelligently."  The  only  difference  between 
our  prayers  of  to-day  and  our  prayers  of 
yesterday  is  the  difference  between  intelli- 
gence and  ignorance. 

All  down  the  ages  we  have  lived  and 
moved  and  breathed  in  an  ocean  of  infinite 
Life  and  Love  and  Truth,  and  have  not 
been  able  to  convert  it  into  concrete  mani- 
festation. Jesus  took  the  invisible,  utilized 
it  and  brought  about  visible  results.  We  ad- 
mit that  God  is  everywhere,  and  then  pray 
to  him  as  if  he  were  really  afar  off,  and  not 
here  at  all.   We  are  twisted. 

James,  the  Apostle,  says:  "A  double 
minded  man  is  unstable  in  all  his  ways.  Let 
not  that  man  think  that  he  shall  receive  any- 
thing of  the  Lord."  What  does  he  mean 
by  "double  minded?"  Perhaps  you  have 
read  it  a  thousand  times — most  of  you  more 
than  that,  and  what  is  the  meaning  these 
words  convey  to  you?  "A  double  minded 
[89] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


man  is  unstable  in  all  his  ways.  Let  not 
that  man  think  that  he  shall  receive  any- 
thing of  the  Lord."  No;  so  long  as  he  is 
double  minded,  he  will  get  no  results.  We 
are  double  minded  if  on  one  hand  we  believe 
in  the  omnipotence  of  God,  and  on  the  other 
hand  we  believe  in  the  potency  of  evil.  We 
are  not  single  minded.  W^e  do  not  realise  in 
our  silent  prayer  that  there  is  no  potent  in- 
fluence in  the  universe  other  than  the  Holy 
Spirit  of  Infinite  Life.  We  pray  to  be  pro- 
tected from  the  hate  of  one,  the  envy  of 
another,  the  jealousy  of  men.  We  admit 
with  our  minds  a  thousand  things  that  have 
no  place  and  no  power  in  the  Infinite.  We 
are  not  only  double  minded,  but  multiple 
minded.  It  is  only  the  single  minded  man 
who  is  promised  that  his  prayers  shall  be 
heard.  "The  effectual,  fervent  prayer  of  a 
righteous  man  availeth  much,"  says  the  Bi- 
ble. "The  effectual,  fervent  prayer  of  a 
righteous  man."  A  righteous  man  is  a  man 
who  thinks  right,  and  a  man  who  thinks 
right  is  a  man  who  admits  there  is  but  one 
supreme  power  in  the  universe,  but  one  real 
[90] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


actual  presence  in  the  universe,  and  holds 
to  that  in  spite  of  all  appearances;  and  he 
affirms  constantly,  "There  is  nothing  here 
but  God,  Good." 

I  know  appearances  are  dead  against  us. 
But  so  it  is  in  the  world  of  astronomy.  We 
say  that  the  earth  revolves  upon  its  axis  and 
that  this  disproves  the  assumption  of  a  ris- 
ing and  a  setting  sun,  a  moving  sun.  I  am 
stating  an  astronomical  fact,  but  my  senses 
will  not  corroborate  it.  The  profoundest 
astronomers  in  the  world  see  the  sun  coming 
up  and  see  it  going  down  with  their  eyes, 
but  their  reason  corrects  the  notion  that  it 
moves.  "To  the  eye  of  vulgar  logic"  there 
is  a  rising  and  a  setting  sun.  In  the  realm 
of  "pure  reason"  there  is  no  such  thing.  We 
are  called  upon  to  cling  hard  to  the  fact. 
"When  your  reason  and  your  senses  con- 
flict, cling  unto  your  reason,"  says  the  wise 
man.  You  do  so  in  every  other  department 
of  investigation,  why  not  in  the  Science  of 
Spiritual  investigation? 

If  Jesus  had  admitted  the  reality,  the  un- 
changeability  of  the  witliered  arm,  do  you 
[91] 


I 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


suppose  he  could  have  cured  it?  Jesus  saw 
with  the  inner  eye  what  the  senses  of  man 
can  never  reveal.  He  saw  the  perfectness 
of  the  man  as  an  idea  in  the  Divine  Mind, 
and  this  equipped  him  with  power  from 
on  high  to  bring  about  so-called  miracles. 
But  they  were  not  miracles  at  all.  He  was 
not  setting  aside  any  law ;  he  was  co-operat- 
ing with  and  demonstrating  the  law.  If  by 
miracle  we  mean  the  setting  aside  of  law, 
there  is  no  such  thing.  If  by  miracle  we 
mean  the  evolving  from  within  ourselves  of 
a  divine  Principle,  of  an  ever-present  force 
or  energy  or  law,  then  there  is  a  miracle. 
Jesus  merely  utilised  what  other  men  had 
lived  and  moved  and  breathed  in ;  he  utilised 
God.  That  is  what  Edison  is  doing  to-day. 
He  is  utilising  that  which  we  have  lived  and 
moved  and  breathed  and  been  carried  about 
in — God.  The  senses  bear  no  more  testi- 
mony to  electrical  energy  than  they  give  to 
the  presence  of  God.  Is  this  any  reason 
for  denying  the  presence  of  electrical  en- 
ergy in  the  universe?  Not  at  all.  Then  are 
we  justified  in  denving  the  presence  and 
[  92  ] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


power  of  God  simply  because  we  cannot  see 
his  presence  with  the  physical  eye?  No. 
Does  Edison  petition  electrical  energy  to 
manifest  itself  as  light  and  heat  and  motive 
power  ?  Not  at  all ;  he  is  too  wise  for  that. 
He  finds  out  the  laws  of  electricity.  He 
finds  out  the  means  by  which  this  unseen 
and  in\asible  force  can  be  converted  into 
seen  and  visible  results.  These  are  the  pray- 
ers of  Edison.  Wonderful  prayers.  He 
has  blessed  the  world  with  them. 

We  do  not  petition  the  Principle  of  Be- 
ing; we  simpl}^  learn  its  laws  and  co-operate 
with  them  and  manifest  our  God-given 
dominion  over  our  sense  of  limitation.  Our 
privations  are  transmuted  into  privileges, 
and  our  difficulties  become  opportunities. 
We  affirm  "I  am  one  with  thee,  O  God!" 
with  all  it  implies.  "I  am  one  with  thee, 
O  God,  the  Principle  of  life  and  happiness, 
truth  and  power.  I  am  one  with  thee,  O 
Principle  of  Life!  I  am  one  with  eternal 
Life!"  You,  too,  can  say  with  Jesus,  "I 
and  the  Father  are  one."  The  effect  and 
its  causes  are  inseparable.  "Nerve  me,  O 
[93] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


God,"  says  Emerson,  "with  ceaseless  affir- 
mation of  my  divinity."  These  are  our  con- 
stant prayers.  We  are  "Instant  in  prayer." 
Whenever  temptation  arises  to  suggest  that 
we  are  mere  mortals,  suhject  to  mortal  law, 
so-called,  subject  to  finite  limitation,  then 
we  are  nerved  to  ceaseless  affirmation,  to 
our  oneness  with  God.  We  do  not  raise 
our  hats  or  kneel  in  the  streets  or  in  the 
churches,  but  is  this  any  reason  for  assert- 
ing that  we  are  a  prayerless  people? 

Oh,  Jesus  was  wise!  He  said  to  men,  to 
the  people,  "Ye  pray  that  ye  may  be  heard 
of  men," — then,  turning  to  his  disciples,  he 
said,  "Don't  you  pray  that  way.  When 
you  pray,  enter  into  your  closet,  into  the 
secret  sanctuary  of  your  own  souls,  and 
when  you  have  shut  the  door — closed  your 
senses  by  becoming  conscious  of  the  om- 
nipresence of  God,  pray  to  that  inner  Prin- 
ciple of  Being  that  reposes  at  the  very  cen- 
tre of  yourself,  and  your  Father  which 
seeth  in  secret  shall  reward  you  openly." 
That  which  took  place  in  secret  will  pres- 
ently be  seen  in  the  visible.  If  you  want 
[94] 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


health,  beheve  that  health  is  the  constant, 
persistent  state  of  your  being,  and  presently 
you  shall  manifest  it  in  your  body,  but  you 
will  never  manifest  it  in  your  body  so  long 
as  you  believe  in  an  importation  from  with- 
out. So  long  as  you  believe  that  you  have 
not  got  it,  and  call  upon  God  to  give  it  to 
you  by  some  strange  external  method,  just 
so  long  will  you  never  get  it.  But  once  re- 
alise that  it  is  within  you,  bubbling  up  like 
a  well  of  life,  once  realise  that  it  is  your 
natural  normal  state,  given  you  by  God  and 
sustained  by  the  law  of  God,  and  then  you 
will  begin  to  sa}^  "I  am  well,  I  am  strong 
with  the  strength  of  the  Holy  Spirit;"  and 
you  will  become  stronger  through  your  af- 
firmation of  God's  truth.  These  are  your 
prayers — affirmations  of  truth. 

Take  two  boys  out  in  the  world ;  one  with 
nothing  but  will  power,  and  the  other  with 
nothing  but  prayer  and  no  will  power,  which 
will  succeed?  Think  you  all  the  prayer  in 
the  world  can  make  a  musician?  or  an  elec- 
trician, or  a  mechanical  engineer?  It  takes 
prayer  plus  performance,  and  performance 
[95] 


I 


PRAYER  IN  DIVINE  SCIENCE 


is  always  based  upon  affirmation — "I  am,  I 
can."  These  are  the  prayers  in  Divine  Sci- 
ence. They  are  the  moral  affirmations  of 
our  divine  possibilities. 

Let  us  affirm  our  divinity.  Let  us  pray 
without  ceasing.  Let  us  daily  affirm  our 
spirituality,  our  strength,  our  life,  our 
power  to  succeed.  Let  us  not  exist  in  the 
sense  of  limitation,  but  rise  above  it,  rise 
above  it  by  the  all-conquering  consciousness 
of  our  unity  with  God.  "I  will  pray  with 
the  Spirit ;  I  will  pray  with  the  understand- 
ing also."  In  the  omnipresence  of  God,  we 
have  all  good,  and  it  is  ours  eternally.  As 
soon  as  we  recognise  our  possession  of  good, 
we  have  the  use  of  it.  We  can  consciously 
possess  only  what  we  realise  and  claim.  We 
recognise  this  all  good,  and  accept  it  with 
thanksgiving.  We  also  apply  to  our  daily 
living  the  good  we  have  received. 

"And  all  things  whatsoever  ye  ask  in 
prayer  believing,  ye  shall  receive." 

"Be  sober,  watch  unto  prayer,  continue 
instant  in  prayer,  and  the  God  of  all  sub- 
stance shall  supply  your  needs." 

[96] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


"I  and  my  Father  are  one. 

"If  that  which  ye  have  heard  from  the  beginning  shall 
remain  in  you,  ye  also  shall  continue  in  the  Son,  and  in  the 
Father. 

"That  they  all  may  be  one;  as  thou.  Father,  art  In  me 
and  I  in  thee,  that  they  also  may  be  one  in  us. 

"Wherefore  henceforth  know  we  no  man  after  the  flesh: 
yea,  though  we  have  known  Christ  after  the  flesh,  yet  now 
henceforth  know  we  him  no  more. 

"But  ye  are  not  in  the  flesh,  but  in  the  Spirit,  if  so 
be  that  the  Spirit  of  God  dwell  in  you. 

"For  in  him  we  live,  and  move,  and  have  our  being. 

"Christ  in  you  the  hope  of  glory. 

"For  ye  are  dead,  and  your  life  is  hid  with  Christ  in  God. 
"Yet  not  I,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me. 
"And  ye  are  Christ's;  and  Christ  is  God's. 
"He  that  abideth  in  me,  and  I  in  him,  the  same  bringeth 
forth  much  fruit:  for  without  me,  ye  can  do  nothing." 


E 


THE  ATONEMENT 


"Hereby  know  we  that  we  dwell  in  him,  and  he  in  us,  be- 
cause he  hath  given  us  of  his  spirit." — I  John  4: 13. 

This  subject  of  the  Atonement  is  one  of 
such  general  belief,  and  yet  one  so  poorly- 
understood,  especially  in  the  world  of  denom- 
inational Christianit}^  that  when  one  comes 
to  study  what  the  world  calls  the  New 
Thought,  or  Divine  Science,  or  Primitive, 
or  Apostolic,  or  Applied  Christianity,  at 
once  there  arises  the  question :  What  of  the 
atonement?  So  profoundly  does  the  old 
thought  hold  to  the  atonement  that  the 
seeker  hesitates  very  frequently  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  healing  efficacy  of  Divine  Sci- 
ence and  kindred  philosophies,  because  some 
one  has  said  that  these  do  not  believe  in  the 
atonement. 

I  want  to  make  it  as  clear  as  possible  that 
we  not  only  believe  in  the  atonement,  but 
[99] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


through  our  studies  we  have  come  to  a  more 
glorified  consciousness  of  what  the  atone- 
ment means.  We  not  only  believe  in  it,  we 
understand  it,  in  some  degree  and  to  some 
extent.  If  our  views  have  changed  concern- 
ing it,  they  have  not  changed  for  the  worse, 
but  rather  for  the  better.  We  have,  I  be- 
lieve, a  more  satisfying  concept  of  what  the 
atonement  really  is. 

The  belief  in  the  atonement  did  not  origi- 
nate with  Jesus.  When  we  begin  to  investi- 
gate the  doctrine  we  find  it  as  old  as  the 
human  mind  itself.  Go  back  as  far  as  we 
can  in  the  history  of  the  race,  and  we  find  a 
belief  in  a  necessary  atonement.  Far  back 
in  the  Dark  Ages,  when  man  had  innumer- 
able gods,  more  or  less  vicious,  more  or  less 
wrathful,  angry,  and  jealous,  there  arose  the 
necessity  of  atonement.  The  very  earliest 
record  we  have  is  that  which  is  set  forth  in 
the  older  Scriptures.  In  the  Christian  Bible, 
or  the  Hebrew  Testament,  we  find  the  rites 
and  rituals  of  a  particular  day,  called  the 
Day  of  Atonement,  amplified  and  set  forth 
with  unerring  accuracy.  In  a  changed  form 
[100] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


the  ceremony  still  exists  among  the  Hebrew 
people. 

In  order  to  arrive  at  a  more  satisfying 
idea  of  what  atonement  means,  it  might  be 
well  for  us  to  look  back  and  see  what  it  has 
meant  to  the  race  in  the  past.  It  has  passed 
through  many  stages;  and  various  and  al- 
most innumerable  concepts  have  been  held 
by  the  mind  of  man,  beginning,  I  think,  with 
that  definition  of  atonement  set  forth  in  our 
lexicons  as  appeasement. 

Atonement  originally  meant  a  method,  a 
ceremony,  or  a  means  by  which  Deity  was 
placated.  The  means  by  which  the  race  at 
that  time  sought  to  appease  the  wrath  of  the 
Infinite,  was  to  off  er  up  innocent  bulls,  rams, 
goats,  pigeons,  and  other  living  creatures. 
The  earliest  description  we  find  of  the  Day 
of  Atonement  in  the  Old  Testament,  tells 
of  the  ceremonial  use  of  two  goats ;  the  blood 
of  one  was  offered  up  as  the  first  appease- 
ment of  the  wrath  of  God :  this  was  the  slain 
goat.  The  other  was  the  scapegoat,  over 
wliich  the  hands  of  the  priest  were  held,  and 
upon  whose  back  was  placed  all  the  sins  of 
[101] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


the  children  of  Israel;  the  goat  was  driven 
off  into  the  wilderness,  away  from  the 
haunts  of  men,  and  its  own  kind,  either  to 
live  or  die  in  solitude,  as  the  case  might  be. 
It  had  done  all  that  was  required  of  it.  The 
scapegoat  had  borne  away  upon  its  inoffen- 
sive and  innocent  back  the  sins  of  the  chil- 
dren of  Israel. 

As  we  come  down  through  the  Old  Testa- 
ment we  find  a  gradually  changing  concept 
of  the  atonement.  We  find  the  major  and 
minor  prophets  alike  declaring  that  the  nos- 
trils of  God  are  offended  by  the  odours  of 
the  burnt  offerings  that  the  children  of  Is- 
rael are  offering  up  to  him  on  their  mounts 
of  sacrifice.  We  find  the  minor  prophets, 
especially  men  like  Hosea,  Micah,  and 
Amos,  upbraiding  the  children  of  Israel  be- 
cause of  their  belief  that  they  can  appease 
the  wrath  of  the  Infinite  by  any  such  method 
or  procedure. 

But  we  find  the  Hebrews  still  clinging  to 
rite  and  ceremony,  to  the  old-established  or- 
der of  things,  from  which  they  cannot  seem 
to  get  away.  Even  when  our  intellects  be- 
[102] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


come  persuaded  of  the  error  and  foolishness 
of  any  practice,  we  still  continue  observing 
the  old  rite  and  ceremony  with  our  custom- 
ary annual  regularity,  so  tightly  does  habit 
hold  the  soul.  The  new  dispensation 
changed  nothing. 

"V^Tien  Jesus  came,  he  found  the  Jewish 
thought  of  ceremonies  still  obtaining  even  in 
the  minds  of  those  who  came  to  him  for  his 
teaching.  They  still  believed  in  the  wrath 
of  God;  they  still  believed  in  the  necessity 
of  appeasement. 

So,  we  find  our  New  Testament  writers 
placing  an  emphasis  on  the  atonement  which 
it  should  not  have  received:  it  is  merely  the 
interpretation  born  of  their  own  preconceived 
theories.  If  at  one  time  the  wrath  of  God 
could  be  appeased  only  by  the  offering  up 
of  animal  sacrifices,  now  nothing  short  of  the 
innocent  blood  of  his  own  beloved  Son  would 
suffice. 

And  to-day,  after  two  thousand  years  of 
Christianity,  we  find,  to  a  greater  or  less  de- 
gree, this  peculiar  theory  concerning  the 
atonement  still  holding  the  mind.   Men  still 
[103] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


believe  that  the  innocent  blood  of  Jesus  was 
shed  for  the  remission  of  sins.  To  these  it 
seems  as  if  the  belief  were  based  upon  Scrip- 
tural truth.  But  we  must  remember  that 
those  who  came  to  Jesus  were  men  whose 
minds  still  held  the  old  idea  of  the  sacrificial 
atonement,  for  which  at  one  time  an  animal 
sufficed.  And  since  they  thought  God  must 
be  appeased  in  some  way,  we  find  them  nat- 
urally using  their  old  theories  for  present 
purposes. 

Here  we  find  that  greatest  of  all  sacri- 
fices, the  innocent  Jesus,  suffering  for  the 
sins  of  his  people,  not  only  those  of  his  time, 
but  yours  and  mine.  There  are  those  who 
believe  that  he  died  in  order  to  save  them 
from  the  consequences  of  their  own  sins;  that 
all  they  have  to  do  is  to  profess  to  believe  in 
the  sacred  name  of  Jesus,  to  believe  that  they 
are  washed  in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb,  and  all 
their  past  errors  and  mistakes  and  sins  will 
be  wiped  out  by  this  vicarious  atonement. 

Divine  Science  does  not  uphold  this  the- 
ory. It  does  not  believe  that  the  glorious 
sacrifice  of  Jesus'  self  was  a  personal  sacri- 
[  104] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


fice  by  the  way  of  atonement  for  your  sins 
or  mine.  We  alone  can  do  this — none  can 
do  it  for  us. 

If  we  have  taken  the  atonement  out  of  the 
category  of  appeasement  and  brought  it  into 
the  category  of  reconcihation,  we  have  made 
little  progress  indeed.  The  idea  which  ob- 
tains largelj"-  among  modern  theologians,  is 
that  the  purpose  of  Jesus'  great  sacrifice  was 
to  reconcile  God  to  man.  If,  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  history  of  the  race,  we  merely 
sought  to  appease  the  wrath  of  God  through 
the  off  ering  up  of  animal  sacrifices,  and  now 
through  the  death  of  his  well-beloved  Son 
we  seek  to  reconcile  God  to  the  race,  we 
still  have  not  made  much  progress. 

The  whole  teaching  of  Jesus  was  the  ex- 
act reverse  of  this.  The  whole  burden  of  his 
song  was  that  man  should  become  reconciled 
to  the  law  of  God.  The  reconciliation  was 
not  on  the  part  of  God,  but  on  the  part  of 
man :  this  was  his  whole  teaching. 

He  came  not  to  make  atonement,  but  to 
interpret  it.  He  came  not  to  go  through  a 
certain  bloody  sacrifice  in  order  that  this 
[105] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


atonement  might  be  brought  about,  but  to 
acquaint  us  intelligently  with  the  definition 
and  the  possibilities  of  atonement. 

We  have  three  definitions  given  of  the 
word  atonement.  The  first  is  apjieasement; 
the  second  is  reconciliation;  and  the  third  is 
unification  or  unity  or  at-one-ment.  It  is 
this  last  interpretation  which  Divine  Science 
prefers  to  use.  Separate  the  word  atone- 
ment and  you  find  at-one-ment,  which  means 
being  at  one,  not  atoning  for. 

The  whole  purpose  of  Jesus  was  not  to  die 
or  to  atone,  but  to  make  clear,  to  exemplify, 
man's  at-one-ment  with  God;  this  was  the 
real  atonement  of  Jesus. 

Perhaps,  j'^ou  argue,  it  was  the  purpose  of 
his  Father  to  offer  up  his  beloved  Son  as  a 
sufficient  expiation  for  our  sins  and  all  the 
sins  of  the  race.  It  might  seem  so;  just  so 
long  as  we  regard  God  in  the  light  of  a  sym- 
pathising, loving,  human  parent,  and  no 
more,  just  so  long  we  shall  hold  this  idea. 

Let  us  suppose  that  a  mutiny  breaks  out 
aboard  a  battleship  in  war-time.  Let  us  suj)- 
pose  this  mutiny  threatens  to  hamper  the 
[106] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


fleet  and  destroy  the  particular  ship  on  which 
it  takes  place;  let  us  suppose,  in  addition, 
that  the  mutineers  are  arrested  and  tried. 
We  all  know  that  the  usual  sentence  pro- 
nounced under  such  conditions  is  the  sen- 
tence of  death. 

Suppose  that  aboard  this  battleship  is  the 
Captain's  only  child.  This  son  goes  to  his 
father  and  says:  "I  realise,  Father,  the  das- 
tardly conduct  of  these  sailors;  I  realise  the 
evil  consequences  that  may  follow  if  such 
outbreaks  are  not  stopped.  But  I  also  real- 
ise their  ignorance,  and  that  therefore  they 
ought  not  pay  the  penalty  of  their  offenses; 
I  off  er  myself  in  their  place.  I  off  er  myself 
as  a  sufficient  appeasement  of  your  wrath. 
I  offer  myself  as  a  sufficient  substitute  for 
their  bodies."  When  you  look  at  it  from 
the  point  of  personal  sacrifice  it  is  wonder- 
ful, marvellous,  glorious.  "Greater  love  hath 
no  man  than  this,  that  he  lay  down  his  life 
for  his  friends." 

But,  suppose  the  father  accepts  the  son's 
offer!  No  matter  what  we  think  of  this  son, 
no  matter  how  gloriously  we  conceive  of  his 
[107] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


character,  no  matter  how  we  magnify  his 
love  and  self-sacrifice:  what  shall  we  think 
of  the  father  ? 

What  should  we  think  of  the  human  parent 
who  accepted  as  a  sufficient  substitute  for 
mutinous  sailors  his  own  inoffensive  child? 
Yet,  is  not  this  the  thing  we  have  under- 
stood of  the  atonement:  that  God  sent  his 
only  begotten  Son  into  the  world  to  die  in 
order  that  we  might  live? 

What  we  want  to  do  is  to  take  the  atone- 
ment out  of  the  category  of  dispensations, 
and  to  relieve  our  minds  of  the  thought  that 
it  was  a  providential  occurrence.  If  it  had 
been  a  providential  occurrence,  if  he  were 
predestined  to  it,  Jesus  would  not  be  entitled 
to  quite  so  much  credit  as  we  have  been  in 
the  habit  of  bestowing  upon  him;  because, 
if  a  man  does  what  he  is  destined  to  do,  and 
is  given  the  strength  and  the  grace  to  go 
through  with  it,  there  is  not  so  much  that  is 
praiseworthj^ :  he  could  not  do  anything  else. 

If  this  is  true  concerning  Jesus,  is  it  not 
equally  true  concerning  Judas,  who  be- 
trayed him?  If  it  was  a  predestined  tragedy 
[108] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


or  drama,  intended  to  work  out  for  the  good 
of  the  race,  why  consider  Judas  the  villain 
in  the  play,  with  hissing  and  execrations? 
^\Tiy  should  we  go  on  down  the  centuries 
hissing  one  who  was  selected  by  the  Great 
Playwright  himself  for  the  part,  for  a  part 
that  no  other  man  in  the  universe  could 
play?  Why  should  we  go  on  perpetually 
applauding  another  for  playing  the  charac- 
ter that  was  destined  for  him  originally? 
Why  should  w^e  applaud  if  the  words  he 
speaks  were  put  in  his  lips  and  mouth,  if  the 
strength  were  put  in  his  limbs,  and  the  cour- 
age into  his  heart  ?  What  credit  is  it  to  him, 
or  what  discredit  to  the  other?  These  are 
questions  for  the  thoughtful  mind  to  pon- 
der. 

We  believe  in  the  atonement  as  the  most 
necessary  thing  in  the  universe,  but  we  can- 
not believe  in  it  as  we  used  to.  So  we  take 
the  third  definition  of  the  word,  "to  make 
at-one  with."  ISIay  I  say  that  Jesus  did  not 
die  quite  so  much  to  appease  the  wrath  of 
God  concerning  the  other  children  of  God, 
as  to  appease  the  wrath  of  men?  May  I 
[109] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


say  that  he  did  not  die  quite  so  much  upon  a 
demand  on  the  part  of  God,  as  upon  the  part 
of  men?  According  to  our  old  teachings,  we 
believed  that  God  handed  Jesus  over  to  the 
world  and  said  to  the  people  of  that  time, 
"Crucify  him!  Crucify  him!"  But,  if  you 
study  the  New  Testament  carefully,  you  will 
find  that  it  was  the  Pharisees  who  said  "Cru- 
cify him!" 

Why  did  they  demand  the  blood  of  the 
innocent  Jesus  ?  Because  he  had  proclaimed 
a  great  truth  which  was  so  contradictory  and 
in  such  direct  and  utter  opposition  to  any- 
thing they  had  ever  believed  before,  that  they 
at  once  proclaimed  him  a  blasphemer.  He 
declared  the  truth  of  the  atonement.  He 
never  participated  in  a  sacrificial  ceremony, 
but  he  sought  to  make  clear  what  the  atone- 
ment was,  and  to  define  it  as  the  at-one-ment 
of  man  with  God.  So  he  said,  in  the  words 
of  our  text:  "I  am  in  the  Father,  and  ye 
in  me,  and  I  in  you."  The  moment  he  voiced 
this  beautiful  thought,  the  Pharisees  said: 
"Crucify  him!  He  maketh  himself  to  be 
one  with  God,  equal  with  God!  Crucify 
[110] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


him!"  This  was  the  first  thing  that  dis- 
turbed and  angered,  or  irritated  them,  this 
conviction  that  since  he  assumed  more  than 
any  other  man  in  the  world  had  yet  as- 
sumed, he  was  declaring  himself  to  be  equal 
with  God! 

Since  that  day  we  have  gone  on  believing 
that  the  thing  had  to  be  done,  the  crucifixion 
gone  through,  and  that  according  to  divine 
dispensation.  Perhaps  it  was  necessary  for 
it  to  take  place,  but  not  according  to  divine 
dispensation  quite  so  much  as  according  to 
human  ignorance  and  human  anger. 

We  are  told  it  was  his  own  Heavenly 
Father  and  not  the  Pharisees  who  preor- 
dained Jesus  to  the  crucifix.  It  was  the 
Pharisees  who  were  agitated  into  a  state  of 
mind  which  demanded  the  blood  of  this  in- 
nocent man. 

Then  his  own  disciples,  who  had  just 
enough  of  the  Jew  left  in  them,  just  enough 
of  the  old  order  of  thought  left  to  make  the 
idea  a  natural  one,  conceived  of  his  death  as 
an  atonement.  Instead,  it  was  the  manifes- 
tation of  his  at-one-ment  with  the  great  Infi- 
[111] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


nite  Life.  He  was  too  great  to  kill,  but  in 
order  that  other  men  might  know  the  truth, 
he  laid  down  his  life. 

The  idea  of  the  at-one-ment  of  Jesus  is 
the  idea  of  a  tremendous  love.  All  of  the 
glory  goes  to  Jesus  because  he  did  what  he 
did  not  actually  have  to  do,  though  some  of 
us  feel  that  he  was  obliged  to  do  it;  but  in 
his  own  words,  he  said,  "I  have  power  to  lay 
down  my  life,  and  power  to  take  it  again." 

He  might  have  avoided  the  crucifixion  if 
he  had  wished.  He  might  have  avoided  all 
the  harrowing  and  harassing  conditions  that 
preceded  his  crucifixion.  It  was  not  an  in- 
cumbent necessity  that  he  should  die  for  you 
and  me.  He  merely  assumed  the  responsi- 
bility of  jjroclaiming  a  great  truth  at  the 
cost  of  angering  others,  at  the  cost  of  being 
misunderstood,  at  the  cost  of  being  misrep- 
resented and  crucified. 

Always  you  will  find  Jesus  speaking  of 
his  Heavenly  Father  as  Love,  Infinite  Love. 
You  will  find  him  illustrating  the  great  love 
of  God  in  a  speech  to  a  few  Pharisees  stand- 
ing about:  "What  man  is  there  of  you, 
[112] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


whom  if  his  son  ask  bread,  will  he  give  him 
a  stone?  Or  if  he  ask  a  fish,  will  he  give  him 
a  serpent?"  Will  God  answer  your  prayers 
by  giving  you  the  very  ojDposite  thing  to 
that  for  which  you  cry? 

To  the  mind  of  Jesus,  God  M  as  Love.  If 
he  prophesied  his  crucifixion  and  death,  he 
also  prophesied  his  omti  resurrection  and  as- 
cension. But  his  prophecies  of  suffering 
were  based,  not  so  much  upon  the  actions  of 
a  divine  Providence,  as  upon  the  actions  of 
men  who  did  not  understand  him. 

If  any  one  were  to  bring  a  new  idea  to  the 
world  to-day,  he  would  be  perfectly  justified 
in  proclaiming  the  fact,  though  the  idea 
would  not  be  adopted  at  once.  Perhaps  men 
would  so  misunderstand  his  motive  that  they 
would  persecute  him;  they  might  hand  him 
over  to  the  authorities,  or  regard  him  simply 
as  a  harmless  lunatic.  Because  he  realised 
that  man  would  not  understand  his  mission, 
knowing  also  the  nature  of  the  men  of  his 
day,  Jesus  was  able  to  prophesy  his  own  de- 
struction, his  own  crucifixion. 

He  knew  the  men  of  his  time  were  so 
[113] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


grossly  ignorant  as  to  be  terribly  vindictive. 
He  realised  if  he  said  anything  contrary  to 
their  fixed  beliefs,  anything  that  angered 
them,  they  would  immediately  rise  against 
him  and  clamour  for  his  blood. 

A  man  may  proclaim  almost  any  kind  of 
a  belief  to-day  and  no  one  would  think  of 
crying  "Crucify  him!"  But  the  customs  of 
that  far-off  day  were  different,  and  Jesus 
knew,  when  he  came  and  overturned  one  of 
their  most  cherished  institutions;  when  he 
proclaimed  an  atonement  that  did  away  with 
blood  sacrifice  altogether,  and  made  it  a 
process  of  growth  rather  than  a  sacrificial 
offering;  he  was  going  to  incur  the  venge- 
ance of  the  priests,  because  he  was  going 
against  the  established  order  of  over  two 
thousand  years.  He  knew  he  was  going  to 
incur  the  anger,  the  hostility,  the  antago- 
nism, the  hatred  of  the  Pharisees ;  though  we 
are  told  that  the  common  people  heard  him 
gladly.  But  those  who  cherished  as  their 
lives  the  rites  and  customs  and  ceremonies; 
to  whom  the  sending  of  the  scapegoat  to  the 
[114] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


wilderness  and  tlie  offering  up  of  a  bloody- 
sacrifice  was  necessary,  were  aroused. 

Let  us  study  the  meaning  of  the  atone- 
ment, and  note  its  effect  on  the  people  of 
that  day,  with  regard  to  its  resulting  in 
making  them  better  men.  When  the  mem- 
ory of  the  atonement,  the  ritual  and  the  cere- 
monies were  over,  they  went  back  to  their 
fields  and  stores,  to  their  false  balances  and 
usury  and  crookedness,  only  waiting  another 
Day  of  Atonement  to  wipe  it  all  out;  only 
waiting  another  poor  scapegoat  to  be  sent 
into  the  wilderness  to  atone  for  their  of- 
fences, century  after  century  wiping  out 
their  misdeeds  once  a  year.  What  wonder 
the  minor  prophets  pleaded:  "Of  what 
value  are  your  bloody  sacrifices?  They  are 
a  stench  in  the  nostrils  of  God." 

Now,  let  us  take  the  atonement  of  Jesus. 
Does  each  man,  who  believes  in  the  atone- 
ment of  Jesus,  feel  that  the  offering  up  of 
the  blood  of  our  Saviour  has  made  sufficient 
recompense  to  Almighty  God  for  his  par- 
ticular sins?  Has  it?  Does  the  Christian 
belief  in  the  atonement,  the  offering  up  of 
[115] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


the  innocent  blood  of  Jesus,  save  us  from  the 
penalty  of  our  own  wrongdoing?  If  it  does, 
then  the  atonement  is  right  as  the  theolo- 
gians put  it.  If  the  blood  of  Jesus  was  of- 
fered up  for  the  remission  of  your  sins  and 
of  mine,  then  the  penalty  due  our  sins  has 
been  remitted  through  this  wonderful,  mar- 
vellous, and  most  inexplicable  sacrifice. 

But,  even  when  we  believe  in  this  inter- 
pretation most  perfectly,  we  go  on  our  pe- 
culiar ways,  living  our  peculiar  lives,  stand- 
ing up  to-day  and  falling  down  to-morrow; 
therefore,  nothing  has  been  altered  or  remit- 
ted. It  must  mean  vastly  more  than  this; 
hence  we  take  the  third  definition  of  the 
word:  to  unify,  to  make  at-one-with;  to  es- 
tablish connection  between  the  individual 
and  the  Universal ;  to  reveal  to  man  his  unity 
with  the  great  Deific  Principle. 

This  was  the  only  idea  of  atonement  in 
the  mind  of  Jesus.  I  do  not  think  that  it 
ever  occurred  to  him  that  his  dying  on  the 
crucifix  was  going  to  relieve  you  and  me 
from  the  penalties  of  our  own  sins,  or  that 
we  could  be  washed  in  "the  blood  of  the 
[116] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


Lamb,"  as  we  have  used  this  phrase,  if  we 
meant  to  go  on  living  a  L"fe  of  recklessness 
and  sinfulness,  then  at  the  last,  could  say: 
"I  believe  in  Jesus,  I  am  washed  in  his  re- 
deeming blood." 

That  would  not  put  us  in  the  kingdom; 
mere  belief  will  not  do  us  any  good.  It 
must  be  more  than  that.  Jesus  said:  "Be- 
lieve in  God,  believe  also  in  me."  He  might 
have  gone  further  and  added:  "Believe  in 
yourselves;  believe  that  you,  too,  are  the 
sons  of  God,  and  believe  it  so  thoroughly 
that  you  will  act  according  to  your  belief; 
this  will  bring  about  the  atonement." 

We  do  not  believe  that  God  will  be  angry 
with  his  own  children.  We  do  not  believe 
that  he  has  to  be  reconciled  to  us.  We  know 
he  has  no  grudge  against  us.  If  we  realise 
the  fact  that  we  are  spiritual  beings  and  not 
material,  that  we  are  now  the  children  of 
God,  gradually  we  are  brought  into  at-one- 
ment  in  consciousness,  and  M'e  become  con- 
sciously at-one  with  the  All-Good,  the  Per- 
fect, the  Permanent. 

This  is  the  idea  of  atonement  that  Divine 
[117] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


Science  is  bringing  to  all  men.  This  is  tak- 
ing it  out  of  the  sacrificial,  out  of  the  low, 
the  vulgar,  the  gross,  and  bringing  it  up 
into  the  beautiful  and  the  holy. 

It  does  not  do  away  with  the  atonement; 
it  beautifies  it;  it  makes  it  a  spiritual  state 
to  you  and  to  me. 

We  believe  also  in  sacrifice,  but  not  in 
blood  atonement.  We  believe  that  if  we 
sacrifice  our  evil  habits  on  the  altar  of  Infi- 
nite Love;  if  we  sacrifice  our  lusts,  our  an- 
ger, our  jealousies,  our  wrath,  our  indolence; 
that  we  shall  then  be  more  alive  to  the  great 
fact  that  God  is  not  a  wrathful  God,  not  a 
jealous  God;  that  He  does  not  require  ap- 
peasement, nor  to  be  reconciled  to  us,  be- 
cause God  has  no  grudges  and  holds  none 
against  us.  Does  it  shock  some  of  you  to 
know  that  it  is  impossible  to  offend  God? 
It  might,  considering  the  fact  that  you  as 
children  were  taught  that  whenever  you 
committed  a  sin  you  did  offend  God,  con- 
sidering the  fact  that  perhaps  you  are  now 
teaching  your  own  children  that  whenever 
they  commit  a  sin  they  are  offending  God. 
[118] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


It  is  just  as  impossible  for  man  to  offend 
God  by  sin  as  it  is  for  man  to  offend  the 
principle  of  mathematics  by  creating  mathe- 
matical errors — just  as  impossible.  Our  mis- 
takes could  not  offend  God  in  the  slightest, 
any  more  than  the  errors  of  a  musician  aff  ect 
the  great  principle  of  musical  harmony.  It 
goes  on  the  same,  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for- 
ever, and  is  never  aff  ected  by  any  deviation 
whatsoever  on  the  part  of  the  musician.  The 
principle  of  mathematics  is  never  changed 
in  the  slightest  degree  as  a  result  of  the  er- 
rors which  children  make  in  schoolrooms,  ac- 
countants make  in  banks  or  other  places. 
So  it  is  that  your  sins,  your  errors  of  thought 
and  conduct,  have  never  and  can  never  of- 
fend God.  That  is  the  great  beauty  of  the 
thought  of  God  as  impersonal  Divine  Prin- 
ciple. 

We  do  not  have  to  reconcile  the  sun  to 
let  its  rays  shine  upon  us.  We  do  not  have 
to  reconcile  the  sun  to  an  object  in  a  dark 
alley;  all  we  have  to  do  is  to  move  the  ob- 
ject, and  place  it  in  the  sun's  beneficent 
rays.  All  we  have  to  do  is  to  move  out  of 
[119] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


the  darkness,  out  of  our  spiritual  ignorance, 
to  be  taken  out,  if  you  prefer,  from  this  be- 
lief in  the  necessity  of  any  one  man  in  the 
universe  atoning  for  any  other  man's  sins. 

Perhaps  you  are  wondering  what  I  am 
thinking  of  the  wonderful  sacrifice  of  Jesus? 
Perhaps  you  are  wondering  if  in  my  own 
mind  I  am  belittling  it?  Only  a  few  pages 
back  I  said  that  he  did  not  have  to  do  it ;  it 
was  not  an  incumbent  necessity  placed  upon 
him  by  his  Heavenly  Father.  He  did  it  vol- 
untarily, and  herein,  to  my  mind,  lies  the 
great  grandeur  of  the  character  of  Jesus, 
that  he  did  that  voluntarily  which  perhaps 
you  and  I  could  not  be  dragged  into  doing. 
He  did  it  by  the  exercise  of  a  tremendous 
love,  which  you  and  I  are  trying  to  culti- 
vate, and,  I  trust,  with  some  small  measure 
of  success.  He  realised  that  there  was  no 
other  way  out  of  it.  To  withhold  the  truth 
from  the  race  to  save  his  own  life  would  have 
been  cowardly.  To  proclaim  the  truth  and 
take  all  the  terrible  risk  of  so  doing  in  order 
that  you  and  I  might  know  the  truth,  was 
[120] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


heroic,  but  from  the  standpoint  of  a  provi- 
dential dispensation,  not  necessaiy. 

Some  one  has  said  that  responsibilities 
gravitate  in  the  direction  of  the  man  who  is 
willing  to  assume  them.  I  want  you  to  bear 
that  thought  in  mind.  It  is  a  good  thought. 
You  cannot  have  lived  long  nor  had  much 
experience  if  you  have  not  seen  the  truth  of 
the  statement.  The  big  men  in  the  world 
are  the  men  who  have  been  willing  to  assume 
responsibilities.  The  little  men  in  the  world 
are  the  men  who  never  wanted  to  assmne 
responsibility. 

Jesus  was  one  of  the  greatest  men  in  the 
world  and  he  assumed  the  greatest  and  big- 
gest responsibility,  the  responsibility  of  pro- 
claiming the  at-one-ment  of  man  with  God, 
and  at  the  very  real  risk  of  being  accused  of 
blasphemy,  a  death-penalty  crime  in  his  day. 

The  people  of  the  time  were  not  so  gener- 
ous to  contrary  views  as  they  are  to-day. 
They  did  not  try  him  for  heresy,  though  they 
proclaimed  him  to  be  a  heretic;  they  de- 
manded his  blood,  and  their  demand  was 
heeded. 

[121] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


But  what  to  them  was  the  finish  of  a  man, 
was  to  him  the  beginning  of  a  principle. 
What  to  them  was  the  destruction  of  his  Hfe, 
was  to  him  the  opportunity  for  the  exercise 
of  his  constructive  faculty.  He  took  an  op- 
portunity to  prove  the  supremacy  of  life 
over  death,  of  love  over  hate,  of  truth  over 
error.  And  so  he  has  handed  down  to  you 
and  to  me  the  possibility  of  one  man,  though 
falsely  accused,  doing  something  by  which 
all  men  might  be  benefited  and  blessed. 

You  see,  I  am  reverently  trying  to  take 
the  atonement  out  of  the  category  of  com- 
placent necessity  and  put  it  where  it  be- 
longs, on  the  plane  of  individual  responsi- 
bility voluntarily  assumed.  He  took  it  up 
as  his  part  in  the  great  f)lay  of  life  and  car- 
ried it  out  like  the  man  he  was.  This  is,  to 
me,  the  great  glory  of  the  character  of  Jesus. 
He  manifested  all  the  godly  qualities  in  the 
fulness  of  their  beauty,  grandeur,  might, 
and  power,  because  he  did  what  he  was  not 
required,  but  what  he  thought  was  right;  he 
did  it  to  establish  the  fact  that  you  and  I  and 
the  man  down  the  street  are  at  one  with  God. 
[122] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


Jesus  established  the  new  dispensation  and 
the  new  idea  of  the  atonement;  infinitely 
greater  than  offering  up  his  own  body  on 
the  crucifix  was  the  offering  up  of  himself, 
and  when  I  say  himself,  I  mean  his  human 
self,  his  human  appetites  and  pleasures,  in 
order  that  he  might  take  on  divine  attributes 
and  joys.  Atonement  means  just  this  to 
you  and  me. 

We  have  always  been  one  with  God.  If 
we  are  not  conscious  of  it,  it  is  our  misfor- 
tune. If  we  do  not  realise  our  at-one-ment, 
it  is  a  pity.  But  once  we  do  begin  to  realise 
it,  in  the  degree  of  our  realisation,  we  begin 
to  live,  in  accordance  with  our  one-ness.  We 
begin  to  live  like  God,  in  the  godly,  higher 
nature. 

That  is  the  only  possible  proof  of  at-one- 
ment.  A  mere  belief  in  the  atonement  does 
not  help  us.  A  million  can  believe  for  one 
who  can  prove  it,  even  in  the  smallest  de- 
gree. Jesus  not  only  believed  it,  he  exem- 
plified it.  In  every  act  and  thought  of  his 
life,  in  everything  he  did,  he  showed  his 
unity  with  God.  In  laying  down  his  own 
[123] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


mortal  life,  while  proclaiming  immortality 
through  the  resurrection  of  Lazarus,  he  not 
only  lived  the  Life,  but  demonstrated  it.  It 
was  not  merely  a  beautiful  life,  it  was  a  pow- 
erful life.    It  was  Creative  Life. 

It  not  only  healed  the  sin-sick  soul,  if  you 
believe  the  Gospels,  but  it  healed  the  sulf  er- 
ing  soul  of  its  bodily  infirmities.  Because 
the  power  of  God  was  with  him,  it  not  only 
brought  comfort  to  the  sorrowful,  but 
strength  to  the  weak,  sight  to  the  blind, 
hearing  to  the  deaf.  He  did,  not  what  he 
was  ordained  to  do,  but  what  he  assumed  as 
his  part:  the  proclamation  of  the  truth. 

This,  perhaps,  changes  the  colour  of  the 
atonement,  but  it  is  far  more  satisfying  to 
us  in  Divine  Science  than  the  old  belief  that 
the  blood  of  bulls  and  goats  appeased  the 
wrath  of  a  far-away  God.  It  is  far  more 
satisfying  than  the  idea  that  the  innocent 
Son  of  God  offered  up  his  own  life  on  the 
accursed  cross  in  order  that  we  might  avoid 
the  consequence  and  punishment  of  our  sins. 
It  becomes  beautiful  the  moment  we  think 
of  it  as  the  proclamation  for  every  man 
[124] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


in  the  universe,  that  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, he  is  the  son  of  God. 

The  great  change  that  is  necessary  is  the 
change  in  consciousness.  Of  what  avail  is 
it  to  be  free  and  not  to  know  it?  Of  what 
avail  is  it  for  a  man  to  be  in  a  prison  cell 
with  the  doors  unlocked  so  that  he  could 
walk  out,  if  he  is  not  conscious  of  the  fact 
that  the  doors  are  unlocked?  After  years 
of  imprisonment,  labouring  under  the  con- 
tinual belief  that  the  door  is  locked  and  ut- 
terly impassable,  he  wUl  conclude  that  it  is 
his  home  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  and  will 
never  make  an  attempt  to  leave  it.  If,  in 
the  secrecy  of  the  night,  some  one  had 
turned  the  lock  and  suggested  to  the  prison- 
er that  he  come  out,  and  the  prisoner  should 
walk  up  and  down  his  cell,  just  as  he  had 
always  done,  hearing  but  not  accepting  the 
suggestion,  labouring  under  the  belief  that 
the  door  was  still  locked,  would  he  not  be 
free  and  captive  at  the  same  time?  And 
would  not  his  captivity  be  the  captivity  of 
his  ignorance?  The  race,  for  the  most  part, 
is  stalking  up  and  down  in  the  cage  of 
[125] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


spiritual  ignorance.  The  lock  was  turned 
some  centuries  ago  by  Jesus;  but,  through 
misinterpretation,  we  have  come  to  feel  that 
we  are  just  as  much  prisoners  to  the  senses, 
just  as  much  captives  to  the  body,  just  as 
much  slaves  to  sensation,  as  the  race  ever 
was  at  any  time  in  the  world's  history.  We 
go  up  and  down  performing  the  same  tired, 
weary  walk,  century  in  and  century  out, 
never  knowing  that  we  are  free,  never  real- 
ising that  we  can  come  out  into  the  great 
broad  daylight  and  sunlight  of  the  presence 
of  God,  because  we  do  not  know  that  we  are 
at-one  with  God.  We  feel  that  we  must 
atone  for  our  past,  and  so  we  must;  but  not 
to  God. 

At  first  it  may  seem  blasphemous  for  a 
self-confessed  sinner  to  proclaim  his  unity 
with  God.  But  is  this  self-confessed  sinner 
ever  going  to  be  anything  other  than  a  sin- 
ner so  long  as  we  proclaim  his  separateness 
from  God? 

If  because  of  evil  habits  and  poverty  he 
has  allowed  himself  to  be  held  away  from 
God,  when  he  begins  to  consciously  feel  he 
[126] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


is  one  with  the  Infinite,  he  knows  that  he  is 
not  a  sot,  but  a  spiritual  being,  that  he  is 
not  a  drunkard,  but  a  manifestation  of  di- 
vinity. Does  not  this  consciousness  circu- 
late through  him,  strengthening  him  and 
mending  every  nerve  of  his  body,  and  does 
it  not  show  in  his  face?  Is  it  not  from  this 
and  through  this  that  he  begins  to  Hft  him- 
self above  his  past,  getting  away  from  his 
dead  self,  to  arise  and  go  to  his  Father? 

Just  so  long  as  a  man  believes  himself  at 
odds  with  God,  just  so  long  as  he  feels  he 
can  never  become  one  with  the  Infinite,  just 
so  long  he  will  continue  to  be  a  drunkard, 
and  poor  and  sick  and  diseased.  It  cannot 
be  otherwise. 

At-one-ment  with  Life  and  Truth  and 
Power  and  Peace  comes  through  the  realis- 
ing sense  of  our  at-one-ment  with  the  In- 
finite, and  not  through  a  belief  that  some 
one  else  has  paid  the  penalty  for  our 
crimes. 

Your  reformation  and  my  reformation 
depend  upon  the  realising  sense  of  our  spir- 
ituality, followed  by  the  determination  to 
[127] 


THE  ATONEMENT 


put  that  spiritualitj?^  foremost  and  prove  it, 
demonstrate  it.  To  do  this  we  must  feel 
consciously  at  one  with  the  Deific  Power. 

This  is  the  atonement.  The  only  sacrifice 
that  is  necessary  is  the  sacrifice  of  our  pre- 
conceived theories,  our  mistakes,  our  errors 
of  judgment,  and  our  ignorances.  These 
things,  which  are  not  necessary  to  our  well 
being,  to  our  happiness,  to  our  health,  we 
are  to  offer  up  on  the  altar  of  Love.  Thus 
we  shall  find  our  true  sense  of  at-one-ment. 

"Behold,  what  manner  of  love  the  Father 
hath  bestowed  upon  us,  that  we  should  be 
called  the  sons  of  God:  therefore  the  world 
knoweth  us  not,  because  it  knew  him  not. 

"Beloved,  now  are  we  the  sons  of  God, 
and  it  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we  shall 
be :  but  we  know  that,  when  he  shall  appear, 
we  shall  be  like  him;  for  we  shall  see  him 
as  he  is. 

"And  every  man  that  hath  this  hope  in 
him,  purifieth  himself,  even  as  he  is  pure." 


[128] 


LIFE 


"He  that  heareth  my  word,  and  believeth  on  him  that  sent 
me,  hath  everlasting  life,  and  shall  not  come  into  condemna- 
tion; but  is  passed  from  death  unto  life. 

"I  am  come  that  they  might  have  life,  and  that  they 
might  have  it  more  abundantly. 

"He  that  believeth  on  me  hath  everlasting  life. 

"Because  I  live,  ye  shall  live  also. 

"In  Christ  shall  all  be  made  alive. 

"As  the  Father  hath  life  in  himself;  so  hath  he  given  to 
the  Son  to  have  life  in  himself: 

"For  with  thee  is  the  fountain  of  life:  in  thy  light  shall 
we  see  light. 

"And  this  is  life  eternal,  that  they  might  knov)  thee  the 
only  true  God,  and  Jesus  Christ,  whom  thou  hast  sent. 

"My  words  are  life  to  those  that  find  them,  and  health  to 
all  their  flesh. 

"For  to  be  carnally  minded  is  death:  but  to  be  spiritually 
minded  is  life  and  peace. 

"I  have  set  before  thee  this  day  life  and  good,  and  death 
and  evil. 

"Therefore  choose  life,  that  both  thou  and  thy  seed  may 
live." 


LIFE 


"By  faith  Enoch  was  translated  that  he  should  not  see 
death;  and  was  not  found,  because  God  had  translated 
him:  for  before  his  translation  he  had  this  testinaony, 
that  he  pleased  God." — Hebrews  11:5. 

Life,  without  doubt,  is  the  most  serious  of 
all  the  subjects  with  which  the  human  mind 
has  to  deal.  It  is  so  serious  that  in  all  gen- 
erations and  among  all  people  it  has  been 
approached  from  every  possible  angle,  and 
men  have  studied  life  from  protoplasm  to 
infinity.  Through  the  science  of  evolution 
men  have  studied  life  from  the  mineral  to 
mind;  biologists  have  made  remarkable  dis- 
coveries in  the  phenomena  which  we  call 
visible  or  objective  life;  all  of  v/hich  shows 
that  the  human  mind  regards  the  study  of 
life  as  the  most  essential  in  the  universe. 
When  I  say  the  human  mind,  I  wish  to  be 
understood  as  meaning,  in  this  connection, 
the  progressive  mind,  the  thoughtful,  in- 
[131] 


LIFE 


vestigative,  divinely  curious,  mind;  because, 
there  are  those  to  whom  life,  unfortunately, 
is  not  something  to  be  studied,  to  whom 
life  is  not  a  thing  to  be  scientifically  or 
wisely  directed,  but  something  to  be  waded 
through  as  best  one  can.  There  are  those, 
and  I  sometimes  think  they  are  in  the  great 
majority,  who  feel  that  life  is  rather  a 
game  of  chance,  something  that  they  do  not 
know  anything  about,  something  they  con- 
fessedly admit  they  cannot  know  anything 
about.  According  to  their  own  logic,  they 
are  here  without  their  own  consent;  accord- 
ing to  this  same  logic,  they  are  just  as  un- 
ceremoniously removed  hence.  To  such  as 
these,  life  is  therefore  a  transient  experience 
which  begins  with  infancy  and  ends  with 
death,  whether  through  old  age,  disease,  or 
sudden  accident.  This  is  the  popular  idea 
concerning  life:  the  human  experience  em- 
braced between  that  part  of  life  which  we 
call  the  cradle  period  and  the  other  which 
we  call  the  coffin  period. 

Life  is  vastly  more  than  this.   The  larger 
interpretation  of  God  and  the  newer  thought 
[132] 


LITE 


of  things  are  bringing  us  to  a  fuller  sense  of 
the  clearer  interpretation  of  life.  Without 
this  clearer  interpretation,  life  is  hardlj'^ 
worth  living.  It  is  fraught  with  chance  and 
change.  If  we  are  inclined  to  be  pessimistic 
at  all,  cast  down  by  personal  experiences,  we 
regard  life  as  a  rather  toilsome,  tiresome  sort 
of  thing;  we  regard  this  invisible  world  of 
ours  as  a  veritable  vale  of  tears,  something 
we  would  like  to  get  through  with  as  quicldy 
as  possible.  Therefore,  life  must  be  studied, 
not  from  the  merely  biological  point  of  view, 
nor  from  the  physiological,  nor  the  intellec- 
tual, but  rather  from  the  purely  spiritual; 
because,  after  all,  the  only  point  of  view  we 
can  get  of  life  which  is  really  scientific,  is 
the  spiritual.  Even  the  so-called  material 
scientists  are  arriving  at  this  conclusion. 
INIodern  chemistry  is  revealing  to  us  that 
matter  is  neither  life-giving  nor  life-sustain- 
ing; that  it  is  not  something  which  acts 
upon,  but  something  which  is  acted  upon, 
and  this  by  an  invisible,  underlying  princi- 
ple which  one  might  as  well  call  Life,  or 
God,  or  Spirit,  or  Love,  as  anything  else. 
[133] 


LIFE 


It  is  the  invisible  Reality  of  which  all  exter- 
nal manifestations  are  but  so  many  projec- 
tions into  space.  These  are  the  conclusions 
that  modern  physical  science  is  arriving  at. 

And  so  we  see  that  modern  material  sci- 
ence is  arriving,  by  the  slow,  tortuous  intel- 
lectual method,  at  the  same  conclusion  Jesus 
reached  by  the  more  direct  intuitional  meth- 
od of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

After  all,  life  is  invisible.  No  one  has 
ever  seen  life.  You  cannot  touch,  taste, 
smell,  see,  hear,  or  feel  it.  Life  is  like  mind 
in  this:  none  of  the  senses  can  take  cogni- 
sance of  it.  All  that  we  have  ever  seen  of 
life  are  its  visible  manifestations.  So  most 
of  us  have  studied  life  from  the  standpoint 
of  its  visible  manifestations,  just  as  most  of 
us  have  studied  nature  from  the  standpoint 
of  her  visible  manifestations;  we  have  taken 
nature's  convulsions,  as  well  as  nature's 
beauties,  as  evidences  of  what  she  is  capable 
of  accomplishing.  We  have  regarded  na- 
ture as  benevolent  on  the  one  hand  and  ma- 
levolent on  the  other,  constructive  on  one 
side  and  destructive  on  the  other — all  be- 
[134] 


LIFE 


cause  we  have  watched  the  natural  or  visible 
manifestations  of  what  we  call  invisible  na- 
ture. 

When  it  comes  to  studying  life,  we  take  it 
from  this  same  objective  point:  we  look  with 
eyes.  We  see  it  coming  into  birth.  We  see 
what  we  call  life,  gay,  pleasant,  and  joyful, 
or  sad,  unpleasant  and  sorrowful.  We  see  it 
ending  in  death.  And  this,  in  the  past,  we 
have  been  pleased  to  call  life,  is  nothing 
more  nor  less  than  the  imperfect  manifesta- 
tions of  it  on  the  visible  plane.  The  science 
of  ontology,  which  is  superior  to  the  science 
of  biology,  evolution,  or  physiology,  sug- 
gests to  the  inquisitive  mentality — the 
divinely  curious  mind — the  necessity  for 
studying  life  at  first  hand  and  not  accord- 
ing to  any  of  its  visible  manifestations;  we 
are  therefore  called  upon  to  study  life  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  purely  spiritual  or  the 
purely  scientific. 

Life  is  not  what  we  call  life.  Jesus  said 
that  hfe  eternal  consisted  in  a  knowledge  of 
the  only  true  God.  "This  is  life  eternal, 
that  they  might  know  thee,  the  only  true 
[135] 


LIFE 


God."  Life  eternal  consists  of  knowledge. 
There  are  those  who  are  perfectly  satisfied 
with  the  manifestations  of  things.  For  in- 
stance: A  man  will  go  into  a  room,  touch 
a  button,  see  that  the  room  is  suffused  with 
light,  and  never  stop  to  question  the  phe- 
nomenon. It  is  nothing  to  him.  His  sole 
interest  is  to  see  that  the  room  is  properly- 
lighted,  his  sole  care  to  touch  the  button; 
everything  is  done  for  his  convenience.  But 
there  are  those  divinely  curious  persons  who 
are  not  satisfied  with  the  phenomenon,  they 
are  not  satisfied  that  the  room  is  suffused 
with  light  at  a  mere  touch  of  a  button.  They 
must  know  why;  they  must  investigate  the 
science  of  it.  Why  does  this  i)henomenon 
take  place?  The  mentally  indolent  man 
says:  "It  is  nothing  to  me.  I  do  not  care 
why  or  how  or  by  what  method  or  science  it 
takes  place.  All  I  am  concerned  in  know- 
ing is  that  it  does  take  place.  I  am  satisfied 
to  have  the  light."  But  when  the  switch  will 
not  work,  it  is  the  divinely  inquisitive  man 
who  is  able  to  rectify  things.  The  other  man 
[136] 


LIFE 


must  either  remain  in  the  dark  or  get  the 
assistance  of  some  other  person. 

Thus  it  is  with  hfe.  The  mentally  indo- 
lent man  does  not  care  anything  about  life 
in  the  abstract;  he  is  more  concerned  about 
life  in  the  concrete — how  to  enjoy  it,  how 
to  get  the  most  out  of  it,  and  almost  invari- 
ably from  a  merely  physical  point  of  view; 
how  he  is  going  to  cater  to  what  he  calls  life, 
representing  to  him  nothing  higher  than  the 
merely  physical;  how  he  is  going  to  enjoy 
himself  without  suffering  the  consequences; 
how  he  is  going  to  indulge  his  passions  with- 
out going  through  the  necessary  aftermath 
of  j)ain.  These  are  the  things  that  trouble 
his  mentality — beyond  them,  he  has  no  other 
concern. 

Life  is  not  physical.  For  those  who  be- 
lieve that  the  sustenance  of  life  dejiends  upon 
the  physical,  we  can  again  call  modern  sci- 
ence to  our  aid  to  convince  them  of  their 
mistake.  It  is  comforting  to  know  that 
twentieth  century  science  is  corroborating 
first  centurj'-  Christianity.  It  is  very  com- 
forting to  me  to  know  that  men  like  Sir  Oli- 
[137] 


LIFE 


ver  Lodge,  Lord  Kelvin,  and  others,  by  sci- 
entific, intellectual  processes,  are  arriving  at 
the  very  same  point  of  view  Jesus  held  so 
many  hundreds  of  years  ago — that  life  is 
not  sustained  by  matter. 

This  is  made  very  clear  to  us  when  we 
take  the  grosser  form  of  physical  foods. 
Men  graduate  away  from  what  we  call  the 
material :  the  mineral  food,  the  things  of  the 
earth ;  and  we  see  how  very  much  more  neces- 
sary the  fluids  are  to  man's  physical  life.  It 
is  demonstrated  beyond  peradventure,  that 
water  is  more  necessary  to  the  sustenance  of 
physical  life  than  is  solid  food;  that  is,  we 
can  live  longer  without  mineral  food  than 
we  can  without  water.  Again,  we  go  up 
into  the  element  of  air;  we  can  live  longer 
without  water  and  mineral  food  than  we  can 
without  air.  And  now  the  physical  scien- 
tists tell  us  that  back  of  the  air,  without 
which  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  live,  or  move, 
or  breathe,  there  is  that  imponderable  ether, 
which  is  as  much  more  refined  than  air  as  air 
is  more  refined  than  the  vegetable  or  the 
mineral.  There  are  those  who  are  now  be- 
[138] 


LIFE 


ginning  to  tell  us  that  the  ether  corresponds 
to  that  breath  of  God  which  is  spoken  of  in 
the  Bible.  It  is  the  medium  by  which  men 
live  and  move  and  breathe,  and  without 
which  men  could  not  do  any  of  these  things. 
Consequently,  we  see  that  even  on  the  plane 
of  the  purely  physical,  the  sustenance  of  life 
depends  more  on  the  invisible  things  than 
on  the  visible.  When  this  lesson  is  learned, 
as  it  is  being  slowly  but  surely  learned  in 
almost  every  department  of  thought,  men 
will  eat  less  and  live  longer. 

The  day  has  gone  by  when  physical  life 
is  to  be  sustained  by  the  quantity  of  food. 
It  is  even  now  among  the  naturapaths  and 
others  a  question  of  quality.  We  are  eating 
less;  we  are  enjoying  better  health,  and 
there  is  an  increasing  longevity  on  the  part 
of  the  race,  all  because  we  are  getting  away 
from  the  idea  of  the  merely  physical  and  ma- 
terial. 

The  text  that  we  have  chosen  for  our  dis- 
course is  tremendously  interesting:  interest- 
ing from  the  fact  that  though  it  has  been 
accepted  by  many,  it  has  been  ridiculed  by 
^  [  139  ] 


LIFE 


many  others.  Ridiculed  by  those  who  do  not 
understand  its  spiritual  significance,  it  has 
been  accepted  with  the  same  lack  of  under- 
standing, just  as  unquestionably  as  the  man 
who  accepts  the  fact  that  there  will  be  light 
in  a  room  if  he  can  touch  an  electric  button. 

We  have  accepted  these  great  facts  in  Bib- 
lical literature  unquestioningly,  and  yet 
back  of  them  all,  there  is  a  spiritually  scien- 
tific import,  which,  when  understood,  will 
enable  us  to  do  in  the  degree  that  we  under- 
stand it,  just  what  Enoch  did.  It  is  said, 
"By  faith  Enoch  was  translated  that  he 
should  not  see  death."  By  faith!  The  word 
faith  has  come  to  have  a  very  narrow  mean- 
ing; to  most  of  us,  it  represents  a  sort  of 
blind  trust,  a  confidence  in  something  that 
we  cannot  understand,  an  acceptance  of 
something  that  we  cannot  unravel.  We 
think  of  this  peculiarity  of  mind  as  responsi- 
ble, in  the  early  days,  for  the  strange  mani- 
festations of  men  hke  Elijah,  Enoch,  and 
Jesus — a  blind  trust  in  an  invisible  force  or 
power;  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  word 
faith  in  the  original  Hebrew  meant  knowl- 
[  140] 


LIFE 


edge.  If  we  substitute  the  word  knowledge 
for  faith,  we  shall  read  it  in  this  way:  By- 
knowledge  Enoch  was  translated  that  he 
should  not  see  death. 

It  is  by  knowledge  that  we  are  all  trans- 
lated. The  word  translate  means  to  change, 
to  be  removed  from;  by  knowledge  we  are 
changed.  Our  opinions  change  from  day  to 
day  as  the  result  of  exact  knowledge  or  sci- 
entific demonstration.  We  are  removed 
from  our  old  conceptions  every  day  that  we 
think.  We  are  taken  away  from  things, 
which  yesterday  we  regarded  as  true,  and 
transplanted  into  a  new  atmosphere. 

Through  true  knowledge,  Enoch  arrived 
at  the  conclusion  that  life  was  sustained  from 
above  and  not  from  beneath.  He  realised 
that  life  is  far  more  than  the  merely  mate- 
rial, infinitely  more  than  the  merely  intellec- 
tual. He  penetrated  beneath  the  surface  of 
things  and  reached  the  very  foundation  of 
what  constitutes  life.  Thus  he  saw  that  life 
is  and  always  must  be — God.  The  more  he 
could  know  about  God,  the  more  he  would 
know  about  life.  This  is  why  Jesus  said, 
[141] 


LIFE 


"This  is  life  eternal,  that  they  might  know 
thee,  the  only  true  God" — the  only  true 
Life. 

Regarding  life  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
physical,  we  never  know  God,  we  never 
know  what  life  is,  and  so  we  are  told  Enoch 
was  translated  because  he  had  faith  or  un- 
derstanding of  a  Divine  Principle. 

In  another  part  of  this  wonderful  testi- 
mony to  eternal  life  or  immortality  in  the 
flesh,  we  are  told  that  Enoch  walked  and 
talked  with  God :  that  is,  Enoch  lived  the  di- 
vinely contemplative  life;  he  felt  a  sense  of 
nearness  to  the  source  of  things.  He  per- 
suaded himself  of  the  great  fact  that  his 
life  was  God,  and  the  more  fully  he  became 
persuaded  of  this  fact,  the  more  fully  he 
began  to  live  his  life,  his  spiritual  life,  his 
real  life,  because,  after  all,  a  man  has  not 
two  lives.  He  has  not  a  physical,  mortal 
life,  which  begins  and  ends,  and  another 
spiritual  and  immortal  life,  which  neither 
begins  nor  ends.  This  lesson  we  must  learn 
sometime,  somehow,  somewhere ;  whether  we 
learn  it  now  in  this  chamber  of  the  Father's 
[142] 


LIFE 


house,  or  in  the  other  after  what  we  call 
death,  does  not  make  any  difference,  except 
that  it  is  wiser  for  us  to  begin  here. 

We  must  learn  that  life  is  one,  not  two; 
we  must  learn  what  life  is,  and  then  we  shaU 
begin  to  live  it:  live  it  fully,  gloriously, 
profitably,  painlessly.  The  only  sense  that 
most  of  us  have  had  of  life  has  been  that  of 
mortal  existence — a  sort  of  coming  in  at  one 
wing  of  the  stage  and  going  out  at  another, 
a  passage  through,  but  never  anything  fixed 
or  permanent.  INIortal  life  has  been  the  only 
sense  of  life  we  have  ever  had;  because  of 
this,  we  have  never  really  received  from  life 
all  life  contains  for  us. 

After  all  the  only  life  is  the  spiritual  life 
and  this  holds  true,  not  only  after  death,  but 
now.  Of  course,  there  are  those  who  doubt 
life  after  death;  but  most  of  us  are  perfectly 
willing  to  admit  that  immortality  is  a  fact 
which  will  be  proven,  which  wull  be  demon- 
strated after  we  die. 

But  this  was  not  the  teaching  of  Jesus. 
We  are  told  that  the  mission  of  Jesus  was 
to  bring  life  and  immortality  to  light.  Now 
[143] 


LIFE 


when  you  bring  a  thing  to  light,  you  make  it 
manifest.  It  was  to  bring  immortality  to 
light,  to  reveal  to  humanity  the  great  fact 
that  immortality  is  not  a  post-mortem  ex- 
perience but  a  present  possibility,  that  he 
came.  Jesus  had  not  added  to  the  world's 
knowledge  at  all  if  he  merely  came  to  preach 
immortality  after  death.  The  Pharisees  be- 
lieved it,  the  ancient  Egyptians  believed  it; 
the  Israelites  from  time  immemorial  had  be- 
lieved in  immortal  life  after  death.  What 
Jesus  came  for,  then,  was  to  reveal  immor- 
tality now,  to  bring  it  to  light,  to  make  of  it 
a  personal  attainment  in  this  day  and  in  this 
generation.  He  demonstrated  it  in  his  own 
experience;  Elijah  demonstrated  it;  Enoch 
demonstrated  it.  Most  of  us,  especially  in 
the  older  churches,  are  prone  to  regard  these 
experiences  as  deviations  from  the  natural 
order  of  things,  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
they  are  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  ex- 
ternal manifestation  of  an  internal  coopera- 
tion with  the  Divine  Principle.  They  were 
not  strange  and  unusual  experiences  that 
could  never  be  demonstrated  again.  They 
[144] 


LIFE 


were  the  natural  results  of  men's  under- 
standing of  the  principle  of  life  and  their 
own  identification  with  it ;  and  wherever  men 
have  understood  the  science  of  life  from  a 
purely  spiritual  point  of  view,  infallibly, 
longevity  has  been  the  result. 

To  understand  life  as  purely  spiritual 
here  and  now,  and  to  live  the  life  purely 
spiritual  here  and  now  is  to  avoid  a  great 
many  of  the  painful  consequences  that  go 
with  the  opposite  belief.  To  overcome  fear 
is,  perhaps,  the  greatest  necessity  to-day. 
What  a  hindrance  it  is  to  our  success  in 
life,  to  the  enjoyment  of  peace,  to  happi- 
ness and  to  health !  What  a  terrible  sin  it  is ! 
To  stigmatise  fear  as  sin  is  hardly  consistent 
with  our  old  teaching,  and  yet  to  those  of 
you  who  have  studied  the  New  Testament, 
it  must  be  very  apparent  that  John  the 
Apostle  regarded  fear  as  the  most  vicious 
of  all  sins.  He  puts  it  at  the  very  head  of 
all  sins:  "To  the  fearful,  and  unbelieving, 
and  the  abominable,  and  murderers,  and  the 
sorcerers";  he  speaks  of  these  as  all  being 
outside  of  the  kingdom,  meaning  by  the 
[  145  ] 


LIFE 


kingdom,  the  Idngdom  of  happiness  and  joy. 
The  fearful!  He  headed  the  list  with  these. 
When  we  say  that  fear  is  a  sin,  we  speak 
advisedly,  because  it  is  a  lack  of  trust  in  that 
supreme  Life  which  is  God;  it  is  a  lack  of 
faith  in  one's  own  divine  possibilities.  It 
brings  with  it  lack  of  control  over  one's  emo- 
tions, over  one's  sensations,  over  one's  af- 
fairs. It  is  blighting,  demoralising,  diseas- 
ing, and  death-dealing. 

How  overcome  it?  The  one  great  thing 
that  enables  us  to  conquer  fear  is  the  reali- 
sation of  what  life  is,  to  realise  that  life 
is  perpetual,  indestructible,  eternal,  and 
forever  spiritual;  to  realise  that  nothing 
can  deprive  us  of  it.  Without  it  we 
would  not  be.  Life  is  the  foundation,  the 
superstructure,  the  divine  reality  of  each 
and  every  individual;  separated  from  it  we 
cannot  be.  When  once  this  great  fact 
dawns  upon  the  consciousness  of  the  awak- 
ened mind,  fear  subsides;  we  know  that 
there  is  no  death;  we  know  that  life  is  the 
unbreakable  reality.  At  first  it  is  merely 
an  intellectual  thing.  Then,  as  we  walk  and 
[  146] 


LIFE 


talk  with  God,  who  is  Life,  and  dwell  upon 
the  great  facts  of  being,  it  becomes  a  spir- 
itual possession.  Ills  disappear,  diseases 
flee,  health  springs  forth  speedily,  strength 
increases,  and  life  becomes  a  joy  because  we 
know  now  its  indestmctibility.  We  know 
now  that  it  is  not  confined  to  that  period  af- 
ter death  or  before  birth,  but  is  that  which 
knows  no  break;  not  even  human  birth  nor 
human  death  can  interfere  with  it  any  more 
than  the  putting  on  of  the  lights  and  turn- 
ing them  off  can  interfere  with  electric 
energy.  You  do  not  change  the  unchange- 
able electric  energy  of  the  universe  when 
you  turn  on  the  lights  or  turn  them  off 
again,  when  you  run  the  elevator  up  or  bring 
it  down  again.  That  is  static.  Electric 
energy  is  the  same,  yesterday,  to-day  and 
forever;  all  you  do  with  it  is  to  appropriate 
it  and  to  stop  appropriating  it. 

All  that  we  are  doing  here  on  this  plane 
of  consciousness  is  appropriating  life — uti- 
lising it,  if  you  please,  and  frequently  very 
poorly.  We  are  here  to  utilise  life,  and  we 
utilise  it  in  very  much  the  same  manner  as 
[147] 


LIFE 


we  utilise  electric  energy;  we  turn  it  on 
and  we  turn  it  off  again.  We  enjoy  it  or 
we  put  it  out ;  we  practically  do  as  we  please 
with  it,  because  we  are  the  individuals  who 
give  direction  to  that  energy  which  we  call 
life  or  the  spirit.  That  is  our  function  in 
life.  We  shut  it  off  through  fear,  we  enjoy 
it  through  courage. 

Enoch  was  translated.  The  discouraging 
feature  about  this  text  is  that  sometimes  we 
read  it  as  if  it  were  an  instantaneous  experi- 
ence with  Enoch.  We  read  it  as  if  it  were 
some  strange  and  unusual  proceeding  which 
took  place  in  a  night,  when,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  translation  of  Enoch  had  been  go- 
ing on  from  his  early  youth.  By  degrees, 
he  had  become  better  acquainted  with  life. 
The  fact  that  he  walked  and  talked  with  God 
reveals  the  other  fact  that  he  was  a  contem- 
plative individual,  that  he  thought  of  life 
from  its  purely  spiritual  point  of  view  and  in 
its  purely  spiritual  aspect,  and  because  of  it 
life  became  to  him  boundless,  unending, 
most  enjoyable. 

Jesus'  resurrection,  his  ascension,  and  res* 
[148] 


LIFE 


toration  of  life  to  Lazarus,  and  to  the  daugh- 
ter of  Jah'us,  were  all  indications  of  a  pro- 
found knowledge  of  what  hfe  is.  Jesus 
knew  that  the  life  of  Lazarus  was  God;  he 
knew  that  the  life  of  Jairus'  daughter  was 
God ;  he  knew  that  his  own  life  was  God,  and 
by  reason  of  his  knowledge,  he  demonstrated 
his  sjiiritual  life,  on  what  we  call  a  material 
plan.  He  objectified  his  knowledge  of  truth 
and  he  said  to  you  and  to  me,  in  that  won- 
derful but  somewhat  mystic  book  of  Revela- 
tions, "To  him  that  overcometh  will  I  give 
to  eat  of  the  tree  of  life  which  is  in  the  midst 
of  the  paradise  of  God." 

The  book  of  Revelations  is  mystic,  but  it 
is  not  on  this  account  meaningless.  On  the 
contrary,  who  has  eyes  to  see  may  see;  he 
who  has  an  understanding  heart  may  un- 
ravel the  divine  mysteries  and  may  find  for 
himself  on  these  sacred  pages  the  science  by 
which  he  may  hve  longer  and  more  enjoy- 
ably.  "To  him  that  overcometh  will  I  give 
to  eat  of  the  tree  of  life,  which  is  in  the  midst 
of  the  paradise  of  God."  Overcometh  what  ? 
That  is  the  great  question.  What  are  we  to 
[  149] 


LIFE 


overcome?  In  the  old  churches  we  know 
that  we  are  to  overcome  sin,  and  by  sin  we 
mean  those  crude  and  gross  and  coarse 
forms  of  licentiousness.  We  know  that  we 
are  to  overcome  the  murderous  instinct,  the 
thieving  instuict,  the  adulterous  instinct;  we 
know  that  we  are  to  overcome  the  lower  pas- 
sions and  the  lower  vices  and  viciousness  of 
the  carnal  mind.  But  Jesus  meant  infinitely 
more  than  this.  He  knew  that  even  when 
men  overcome  these  low  animal  tendencies, 
they  have  not  j^et  overcome  their  fear  of 
death.  They  have  not  yet  overcome  their 
belief  in  a  life  apart  from  God.  They  still 
believe  in  a  physical  life  which  can  begin  and 
end.  Even  though  men  have  overcome  all 
of  these  lower  instincts,  even  though  men 
are  what  the  world  would  call  strictly 
moral  men,  they  are  nevertheless  unright- 
eous. That  is,  they  are  unright  in  their 
judgment.  They  have  not  overcome  their 
belief  in  death.  Until  we  overcome  that  be- 
lief all  of  our  lifetime  we  shall  be  in  bondage 
to  the  fear  of  it. 

The  righteous  man  is  just  as  much  afraid 
[150] 


LIFE 


of  death  as  the  unrighteous  man,  except  that 
he  has  a  changed  hehef  concerning  it.  He 
is  not  nearly  so  afraid  to  meet  his  God  as  is 
the  unrighteous  man,  but  he  believes  that  he 
can  only  meet  his  God  through  death.  He 
does  not  realise  that  he  may  walk  and  talk 
with  God  on  this  plane  of  consciousness. 
He  believes  that  death  is  the  necessary  ma- 
trix of  immortality.  He  believes  that  the 
experience  of  death  is  the  only  means  by 
which  he  may  enter  into  the  presence  of  that 
Eternal  Life  which  is  God,  when,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  it  is  totally  inconsistent  with  the 
teachings  of  Jesus,  "That  they  might  know 
thee,  the  only  true  God;  this  is  life  eternal." 

I^ife  eternal  consists  in  spiritual  under- 
standing, and  that  must  begin  here.  The 
more  we  get  of  it,  the  more  life  we  shall 
have.  In  ancient  literature,  we  read  some- 
thing that  is  really  interesting  concerning 
this  "tree  of  life  which  is  in  the  midst  of  the 
paradise  of  God."  Ancient  literature  and 
ancient  art  picture  the  tree  of  life  as  having 
its  roots  in  the  air,  apparently  attached  to 
nothing,  with  its  fruit-bearing  branches  lean- 
[151] 


LIFE 


ing  in  the  direction  of  the  earth ;  our  picture, 
the  modern  representation  of  the  garden  of 
paradise,  or  the  garden  of  Eden,  represents 
it  with  its  roots  in  the  earth,  with  its  fruit- 
bearing  branches  extending  upward.  The 
idea  of  the  older  mysticism  was  that  hfe  is 
not  sustained  by  sinking  the  roots  of  thought 
into  materiahty ;  rather  is  it  sustained  by  hf t- 
ing  the  roots  of  thought  in  the  direction  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  into  apparent  nothingness, 
and  yet  into  the  great  somethingness  of 
Life;  "into  the  very  womb  of  ether,"  say  the 
old  literateurs,  there  to  conceive  grand 
ideas  which  presently  bear  fruit:  fruit  not 
so  much  for  self-support  as  for  the  support 
of  the  race. 

The  contemplative  soul  is  that  which  re- 
gards life  from  the  standpoint  of  the  purely 
spiritual,  extending  the  roots  of  its  thought 
in  the  direction  of  the  upper  world,  the  spir- 
itual world:  God,  if  you  prefer;  drawing 
its  sustenance  from  the  Divine,  transmuting 
into  the  human,  feeding  humanity  upon  that 
which  it  derives  from  Divinity.  It  is  a  very 
pretty  picture  and  not  at  all  hurtful  and  in- 
[152] 


LIFE 


jurious.  Rather  is  it  explanatory  of  a  great 
deal  that  M^e  now  dream  about.  We  are  not 
so  much  to  be  fed  upon  the  things  of  earth 
as  we  are  upon  that  bread  which  cometh 
down  from  Heaven.  Jesus  said  to  his 
discij)les :  "I  have  meat  to  eat  that  ye  know 
not  of."  His  life  was  sustained  more 
by  Divine  contemplation  than  by  physical 
exercise  or  material  food.  If  we  would  live 
the  same  life  and  live  well  and  long  and 
helpfully  to  humanity,  we  must  be  fed  from 
the  very  same  source.  Our  tree  of  life  must 
have  its  roots  planted  in  the  Divine.  We 
must  draw  our  refreshment  from  the  great 
Water  of  Life,  which  is  God,  our  sustenance 
from  the  meat  of  the  Spirit. 

Then,  and  then  only,  shall  we  know  what 
life  really  is.  We  shall  become  translated, 
changed  from  a  belief  in  a  necessity  of  de- 
pending upon  matter  to  the  consciousness 
that  Spirit  is  the  only  thing  that  sustains 
and  supports.  The  translation  will  begin  in 
a  small  way;  it  will  go  on  and  on  and  on, 
until  we,  too,  may  taste  of  the  glorious  hope 
and  the  glorious  achievement  of  Enoch. 
[  153  ] 


LIFE 


This  seems  impossible  because  so  few  have 
done  it  in  the  world's  history,  but  a  wise 
man  once  said :  "Whatever  the  human  mind 
can  conceive,  the  human  mind  can  accom- 
plish." When  Jules  Verne  conceived  the 
idea  of  submarines,  only  adventurous  youths 
took  any  interest  in  it;  when  the  idea  of 
navigating  the  air  was  conceived,  wise  men 
shook  their  heads.  The  theologians  said  it 
was  exercising  a  prerogative  which  did  not 
belong  to  man,  invading  the  territory  which 
belonged  alone  to  God,  and  must  eventually 
fail.  It  was  seeking  to  dominate  an  atmos- 
phere for  which  man  was  not  originally  in- 
tended, which  belonged  to  the  birds.  And 
what  do  we  see  ?  We  see  the  dream  of  Jules 
Verne  actualised — demonstrated  in  a  bar- 
barous manner,  perhaps,  but  demonstrated. 
We  see  the  air  dominated,  controlled,  uti- 
lised, in  a  way  that  we  would  not  prefer,  but 
nevertheless  actualised. 

Whatever  the  human  mind  can  conceive, 
that  it  can  accomplish;  this  has  as  much  ref- 
erence to  translation  and  the  overcoming  of 
what  we  call  physical  death  and  to  the  dem- 
[  154  ] 


LIFE 


onstration  and  the  bringing  to  light  of  im- 
mortality in  the  flesh  as  it  has  to  aviation  or 
submarine  warfare.  One  is  just  as  possible 
as  the  other,  the  only  reason  for  its  not  be- 
ing more  fully  demonstrated  is,  as  Balzac 
once  said :  "It  has  hitherto  lacked  its  man  of 
genius  to  demonstrate  it."  Balzac  seems  to 
have  forgotten  Jesus  and  Enoch  and  Elijah. 
Levitation  is  as  much  a  possibility  as  avia- 
tion. The  only  reason  why  it  is  not  more 
generally  accomplished  is  because  it  is  not 
more  generally  studied.  Translation  is  a 
possibility.  To  the  vulgar  mind,  of  course, 
it  is  not.  Why  should  it  be  ?  Has  any  great 
accomplishment  ever  been  possible  to  the 
vulgar  mind?  But  to  the  awakened  con- 
sciousness, it  is  a  demonstrable  possibility. 

We  are  living  in  an  age  when  we  are  be- 
ginning to  say,  even  in  the  world  of  physical 
science,  "I  do  not  believe  anything  is  impos- 
sible." Why?  Because  we  have  seen  so 
miany  things  demonstrated  before  our  very 
eyes.  He  is,  indeed,  an  incredulous  man 
who  would  suggest  that  anything  is  impos- 
sible. 

[155] 


LIFE 


So  many  marvellous  things  have  tran- 
spired in  the  last  twenty-five  years,  that  we 
are  ready  for  anything  on  a  purely  physical 
plane.  We  dominate  all  earth,  water,  sky, 
sea.  All  things  are  possible  to  the  man  who 
believes  they  are  possible.  Enoch  believed 
translation  was  possible ;  he  believed  that  he 
would  not  see  death  if  he  became  more  in- 
telligently acquainted  with  life.  He  demon- 
strated it.  I  am  quite  prepared  to  believe  it, 
because  I  have  seen  this  same  law  in  part 
demonstrated.  I  have  seen  impending  death 
frustrated.  I  have  seen  life  lengthened  bj'^ 
the  dissipation  of  fear. 

Therefore,  if  you  can  totally  overcome 
fear,  you  can  overcome  death,  because  death 
is  produced  by  fear.  Physicians  agree  with 
us  in  this.  Jesus  knew  that  it  was  the  pre- 
disposing cause.  He  knew  that  if  he  could 
destroy  the  fear  of  death  he  could  destroy 
death  itself;  we  know  to-day  in  Divine  Sci- 
ence, if  we  can  destroy  the  fear  of  disease,  of 
poverty,  and  of  pain,  we  can  destroy  this 
trinity  of  evils.  We  know  it  because  we 
know  that  fear  is  the  mother  seed.  We 
[156] 


LIFE 


know  that  fear  is  the  procuring  cause  of 
these  mental  and  physical  maladies.  Destroy 
it  and  they  disappear. 

What  is  the  antidote  for  fear?  A  knowl- 
edge of  the  truth.  Jesus  said:  "Ye  shall 
know  the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make  you 
free."  If  you  know  the  truth  about  any- 
thing you  are  free  from  the  tendency  to  err. 
If  you  know  the  truth  about  life,  you  are 
free  from  the  tendency  to  be  afraid  of  death; 
if  you  are  not  afraid  of  death,  you  will 
neither  invite  nor  attract  it.  Fear  does  both. 
Fear  is  the  magnet  which  attracts  poverty, 
pain,  disease,  death.  To  overcome  fear,  we 
must  know  the  tmth,  and  we  must  know  the 
truth  about  life. 

What  is  life?  Is  it  material  or  spiritual? 
Has  it  beginning  and  ending,  or  is  it  im- 
mortal? Is  it  that  which  we  cannot  see,  or 
that  which  we  do  see?  What  is  life,  after 
all?  Life  is  the  unseen  verity  of  every  man's 
being.  It  is  the  invisible  Reality  and  Sub- 
stance, from  which  he  can  never  become  sep- 
arated, even  though  he  put  off  his  mortal 
body.  Live  he  must;  there  is  no  such  thing 
[157] 


LIFE 


as  death.  Somewhere,  somehow,  he  must 
live,  because  he  is  a  part  of  Life  itself. 
When  this  becomes  more  intelligently  un- 
derstood, we  shall  lose  our  fear,  and  the  con- 
sequence will  be  a  fuller  life,  the  life  more 
abundant,  the  life  more  pleasurable,  the  life 
more  enjoyable. 

The  fact  that  it  is  a  spiritual  life  and  does 
not  tend  to  cause  thought  to  gravitate  in 
the  direction  of  matter,  or  materiality,  or 
sensuality,  does  not  change  the  fact  of  its 
enjoyableness.  He  who  lives  most  is  he  who 
lives  best;  he  who  gets  most  out  of  life  is  he 
who  understands  what  life  is,  and  under- 
standing what  life  is,  knows  it  to  be  purely 
spiritual.  He  walks,  he  talks  with  the 
Spirit,  and  God  takes  him:  that  is.  Life  ab- 
sorbs him,  Life  enfolds  him,  Life  encom- 
passes him.  Life  breathes  through  him.  He 
is  an  instrument  through  which  Life  mani- 
fests itself.  The  fear  of  death  never  comes 
to  him  who  knows  what  Life  is;  he  knows 
that  all  experiences  are  so  many  links  in  the 
great  indestructible,  unbreakable  chain.  To 
live  is  a  delight  to  the  man  who  knows  what 
[158] 


LIFE 


life  is:  not  going  to  he  but  is  this  very- 
moment.  Threats,  intimidations,  have  no 
weight.  lie  feels  the  consciousness  of  a 
Divine  Presence,  he  knows  that  his  life  is 
indestructible  and  eternal  now;  this  gives 
him  courage  to  live  it  beautifully,  cheer- 
fully, happily.  Nothing  can  hinder  such  a 
man  from  entering  into  the  larger,  fuller 
appreciation  of  his  own  divine  possibilities. 

Then  let  us  study  life  from  the  purely 
spiritual  point  of  view.  Let  us  realise  that 
it  is  that  which  is  unseen,  that  which  we 
carry  about  with  us,  that  from  which  we  can 
never  become  separated:  "Neither  height 
nor  depth,  nor  length,  nor  breadth,  nor 
things  present  nor  things  to  come,  can  sep- 
arate us  from  the  love  which  is  in  Christ 
Jesus,"  the  life  which  is  spiritual. 

This  was  the  dictum  of  Paul,  the  Apostle, 
who  said:  "We  shall  not  all  sleep" — that 
is,  we  shall  not  all  die,  but  in  the  twinkling 
of  an  eye  we  shall  awake;  we  shall  put  on 
immortality  now ;  we  shall  become  translated. 

This  is  what  you  are  doing  in  your  bodies. 
You  are  putting  off  mortality  and  putting 
[159] 


LIFE 


on  immortality  while  you  breathe.  You  are 
casting  off  old  cells  and  growing  new  ones, 
by  a  perfectly  unconscious  process  to  your- 
selves. Why  not  surcharge  every  new  cell 
with  the  thought  of  eternal  hfe,  with  the 
thought  of  indestructible  immortality?  Why 
not  think  of  life  as  a  purely  spiritual  thing 
so  that  each  cell,  as  it  takes  the  place  of  the 
old  cell,  shall  come  to  perform  its  function 
harmoniously  and  perfectly,  strong  and  vig- 
orous, until  it  gives  place  to  a  newer  and 
liigher  and  better  cell? 

This  is  immortality:  the  replenishing  of 
the  human  body  by  the  transformation  of  the 
human  thought ;  the  renewing  of  mind  at  the 
fount  of  thought;  having  the  roots  of 
thought  in  the  direction  of  the  Spirit;  bear- 
ing the  fruits  of  that  contemplated  life  in 
health  and  strength  and  joy  and  power, 
abundant  here  and  now. 

Purely  spiritual,  never  material;  purely 
immortal,  never  mortal;  purely  infinite  and 
inexhaustible,  never  finite  and  exhaustible; 
increasing  your  energy,  your  vitality,  your 
power:  this  is  Life! 

[160] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


"The  Lord  shall  open  unto  thee  his  good  treasure,  the 
heaven  to  give  the  rain  unto  thv  land  in  his  season,  and  to 
bless  all  the  work  of  thine  hand:  and  thou  shalt  lend  unto 
many  nations,  and  thou  shalt  not  borrow. 

"Yea,  the  Almighty  shall  be  thy  defence,  and  thou  shalt 
have  plenty  of  silver. 

"The  Lord  is  my  shepherd;  I  shall  not  want. 

"The  young  lions  do  lack,  and  suflFer  hunger:  but  they  that 
seek  the  Lord  shall  not  want  any  good  thing. 

"Trust  in  the  Lord,  and  do  good;  so  shalt  thou  dwell  in 
the  land,  and  verily  thou  shalt  be  fed. 

"^'ea,  the  Lord  shall  give  that  which  is  good;  and  our 
land  shall  yield  her  increase. 

"Thou  openest  thine  hand,  and  satisfiest  the  desire  of 
every  living  thing. 

"Riches  and  honour  are  with  me;  yea,  durable  riches  and 
righteousness. 

"That  I  may  cause  those  that  love  me  to  inherit  sub- 
stance; and  I  will  fill  their  treasures. 

"There  is  that  maketh  himself  rich,  yet  hath  nothing: 
there  is  that  maketh  himself  poor,  yet  hath  great  riches. 

"Wealth  gotten  by  vanity  shall  be  diminished:  but  he 
that  gathereth  by  labour  shall  increase. 

"By  humility  and  the  fear  of  the  Lord  are  riches,  and 
honour,  and  life." 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


"My  God  shall  supply  all  your  need  according  to  his  riches 
in  glory  by  Christ  Jesus." — Philippians  4:19. 

The  close  connection  between  righteousness 
and  riches  has  received  httle  emphasis  from 
the  time  of  Jesus  down  to  the  present  day. 
All  too  frequently  we  have  been  treated  to 
sermons  adopting  the  belief  that  righteous- 
ness and  riches  are  rarely  found  together. 
The  poor  man  takes  some  consolation  from 
the  belief  that  piety  and  poverty  are  often 
found  in  very  close  company;  so  common 
has  this  experience  become,  that  we  have 
come  to  associate  poverty  with  piety.  There 
are  those  in  the  world  who  believe  that  it  is 
impossible  for  a  man  who  is  righteous  to  be- 
come rich.  They  tell  us  a  righteous  man  sel- 
dom acquires  anything.  And  yet  we  have 
abundant  testimony  from  both  the  Old  and 
the  New  Testaments  to  prove  that  the  asso- 
[3] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


ciation  between  righteousness  and  riches  is 
so  close  that  where  we  find  a  lack  of  riches, 
or  a  lack  of  prosperity,  or  a  lack  of  comfort, 
we  should  seek  the  cause. 

Only  yesterday  men  believed  that  God 
was  the  cause  of  poverty.  There  are  those 
champions  of  other  men's  poverties,  who 
would  have  us  believe  that  it  is  the  sharp 
spur  of  necessity  which  drives  men  to  do  the 
great  things  in  life;  when  they  become  suc- 
cessful and  prosperous,  incentive  departs 
and  art  goes  by  the  board.  These  men  take 
a  few  isolated  cases.  They  pick  out  some 
of  the  great  artists  in  the  world,  and  tell  us 
what  they  accomplished  in  the  days  of  their 
poverty,  and  how  little  they  accomplished 
when  they  became  prosperous.  This  may  be 
true  in  certain  individual  cases,  but  art  has 
been  perpetuated  largely  by  the  men  who 
have  been  successful,  not  by  the  men  who 
have  been  failures.  Art,  music,  literature, 
and  science  have  all  been  perpetuated  by 
men  who  have  refused  to  be  carried  away  on 
the  waves  of  prosperity.  For  one  artist  you 
may  cite  who  has  given  up  his  art  and  lost 
[4] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


his  incentive  because  he  has  become  suddenly 
successful  and  prosperous,  you  can  cite  an 
Edison,  a  Ruskin  and  a  host  of  others,  who, 
notwithstanding  the  fact  that  they  have  suc- 
ceeded in  life  and  become  prosperous,  or  are 
prosperous,  have  continued  their  arts  and 
sciences  with  the  same  indefatigable  zeal 
they  would  have  given  had  they  been  the 
poorest  men  in  the  world.  It  is  not  always 
prosperity  that  destroys  incentive.  Poverty 
has  destroyed  a  great  deal  more.  The  lash 
of  poverty  has  destroyed  courage  and  hope 
and  ambition  and  desire;  if  we  could  count 
the  cases  where  budding  genius  has  been 
nipped  by  the  effects  of  prosperity  or  the 
frost  of  poverty,  the  latter  would  so  far  ex- 
ceed the  few  exceptional  instances  of  pros- 
perous men  who  have  given  up  their  arts  or 
sciences  because  of  their  prosperity,  that 
there  would  be  no  comparison.  It  is  ridic- 
ulous to  assert  that  prosperity,  as  such,  has 
an  injurious  effect  upon  art,  or  literature, 
or  music. 

I  know  of  no  more  blighting  thing  in  the 
world  than  poverty,  notwithstanding  our 
[5] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


early  teaching  that  it  is  a  virtue,  and,  al- 
though some  have  assumed  it  as  such,  never- 
theless there  is  a  phase,  and  a  side  of  it,  that 
is  not  tolerable. 

That  is  not  poverty  which  permits  a  man 
to  leave  the  world  and  seek  a  cloister  or  a 
monastery  where  his  wants,  such  as  they  are, 
are  anticipated ;  where  the  cares  and  respon- 
sibilities of  commercial  life  never  touch  him ! 
That  is  prosperity  of  a  kind.  Wherever  a 
man's  wants  and  needs  are  anticipated  and 
he  knows  that  to-morrow  morning  he  is  sure 
to  get  his  breakfast,  provided  he  is  living, 
and  that  to-morrow  night  he  is  sure  to  have 
his  bed,  provided  he  still  lives,  there  is  no 
poverty.  There  is  poverty  where  a  man  is 
clashing  with  the  hard  things  of  the  world 
and,  regardless  of  his  efforts  to  make  good 
honestly  and  legitimately,  is  nevertheless  not 
always  sure  that  he  is  not  going  to  suffer 
want  and  lack.  So  it  is  in  Divine  Science: 
we  are  striving  to  rise  above  poverty,  even 
as  we  are  striving  to  rise  above  pain. 

I  know  there  are  those  who  feel  that  re- 
Ugion  should  never  be  used  for  purely  mer- 
[6] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


cenary  purposes.  But  that  which  actuates 
an  individual  to  rise  above  want  or  disease 
is  not  a  mercenary  purpose.  It  is  his  di- 
vine right.  If  you  follow  closely  the  read- 
ing from  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  you 
will  see  that  there  are  innumerable  prom- 
ises of  wealth  and  abundance  and  riches,  to 
the  righteous  man,  to  the  godly  man.  "No 
good  thing  will  he  M'ithhold  from  them  that 
walk  uprightly,"  says  the  Old  Testament. 

What  is  the  matter  with  us  that  the  su^;- 
gestion  and  the  claim  and  belief  in  lack 
so  frequently  knock  at  our  doors?  It  is 
largely  a  question  of  belief  with  most  of  us. 
Manj'  of  us  were  born  into  poverty.  Many 
of  us  were  raised  on  the  saving  habit.  The 
word  economy  has  been  dinned  into  our  ears 
from  our  earliest  childliood.  No  matter  how 
much  money  you  acquire,  economy  is  a  sure 
harbinger  of  a  certain  kind  of  poverty,  be- 
cause it  breeds  a  spirit  of  limitation.  It 
breeds  the  thought  of  contraction. 

"There  is  that  maketh  himself  rich,  yet 
hath  nothing."  There  is  that  one  who  ac- 
quireth  great  wealth  so  far  as  money  is  con- 
[7] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


cerned,  and  yet  is  poor  in  spirit.  Such  an 
one  has  not  time  to  enjoy  it,  does  not  know 
how  to  spend  it.  "There  is  that  maketh 
himself  poor,  yet  hath  great  riches."  We 
have  been  prone  to  spirituahse  this  text.  If 
a  man  were  to  become  absolutely  poverty 
stricken,  and  yet  were  rich  in  the  grace  of 
God,  he  maketh  himself  poor  because  he 
keeps  his  cash  in  circulation,  and  yet  he  hath 
great  riches  of  enjoyment,  of  pleasure:  I 
do  not  mean  reckless  abundance.  The  man 
who  knows  how  to  keep  his  cash  in  circula- 
tion rationally,  is  going  to  get  more  out  of 
it,  is  going  to  get  more  out  of  life  than  the 
man  who  endeavours  only  to  hoard  and  to 
save  and  to  accumulate.  We  must  needs 
learn  the  sacred  art  of  distribution.  But  we 
can  never  learn  it  until  we  realise  that  as 
children  of  God  we  are  exempt  from  pov- 
erty, even  as  we  are  exempt  from  pain. 

This  is  one  of  the  lessons  we  are  learning. 
We  are  learning  that  we  have  a  right  to  be 
free  from  this  distressing  disease — that  we 
have  a  right  to  be  free  from  poverty,  because 
it  is  a  disease.  It  is  the  mother  of  those 
[8] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


hellish  twins,  sin  and  sickness.  How  often 
men  have  been  tempted  to  barter  their 
honour,  and  women  tempted  to  barter  their 
virtue  to  escape  it?  Instinctively  we  rebel 
against  povertj\  And  when  we  read  the 
Bible  carefully  we  find  that  poverty  is  the 
immediate  consequence  of  wrong  tliinking, 
unrighteousness.  We  find  that  it  is  not  a 
divine  visitation,  and  we  also  find  that  there 
is  a  way  out  of  it.  Di\^ne  Science  is  lead- 
ing us  into  this  great  way. 

When  Jesus  said,  "Ye  shall  know  the 
truth  and  the  truth  shall  make  you  free,"  I 
think  he  also  included  poverty  as  one  of  the 
things  from  which  freedom  was  needed,  be- 
cause he  must  have  known  the  dire  conse- 
quences of  poverty.  He  was  just  as  keen 
a  sociologist  as  our  sociologists  of  to-day; 
the  more  they  penetrate  beneath  the  surface 
of  social  conditions,  the  more  convinced  they 
become  that  drunkenness  and  harlotry  and 
theft  and  greed  are  all  more  or  less  trifles 
to  this,  the  great  mother  of  all  evils. 

There  was  a  day  when  we  declared  that 
poverty  was  the  dii'ect  consequence  of  drunk- 
[9] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


enness.  Jane  Addams  declares  the  very  op- 
posite is  the  truth — and  surely  no  one  can 
speak  with  more  authority  than  Jane 
Addams;  she  declares  that  drunkenness  is 
all  too  frequently  the  effect  of  poverty. 
Those  of  you  who  have  ever  tested  its 
bitter  grip  know  what  temptation  it  has 
brought  with  it.  How  easy  it  is  for  a  man, 
at  least  for  a  short  time,  to  lose  the  sense 
of  lack  through  imbibing  liquor !  How  easy 
it  is  for  a  woman  to  lose  for  a  time  the 
sense  of  lack,  through  the  taking  of  mor- 
phine! 

Oh,  if  we  could  look  into  the  souls  of 
men,  of  the  people  who  are  victims  of  these 
habits,  I  am  sure  we  would  find  that  pov- 
erty has  driven  the  majority  of  them  to  this 
degradation.  No  man  to-day  turns  to  whis- 
key or  morphine  from  sheer  love  or  inclina- 
tion. The  taste  is  cultivated  as  time  goes 
on,  for  in  most  cases  anxiety  or  great  sor- 
row has  driven  them  to  it ;  all  too  frequently, 
Jane  Addams  tells  us,  it  is  poverty. 

It  is  one  of  the  greatest  enemies  of  man. 
We  are  told  expressly  that  we  must  fight 
[10] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


these  enemies,  the  enemies  of  true  peace,  of 
true  purity,  of  true  perfection,  of  true  love 
and  all  happiness.  We  are  told  one  of  the 
great  causes  of  poverty  is  ignorance.  We 
are  told  that,  wherever  communities  are 
lifted  out  of  their  ignorance  through  enlight- 
enment, through  educational  advantages, 
their  poverty  begins  to  decrease.  Sociolo- 
gists, who  have  watched  the  upward  trend 
through  these  advantages,  give  us  this  as 
their  firm  conviction. 

Those  of  you  who  employ  men,  place  a 
premium  upon  enlightenment.  Ignorance 
commands  a  very  low  wage.  I  know  that  to- 
day you  can  get  a  great  deal  of  muscle  for 
very  little  money.  But  when  you  come  to 
buy  mind,  it  is  a  different  question.  Men 
of  mind  place  their  own  value  upon  their 
own  minds.  Men  of  muscle  have  other 
men's  valuation  placed  upon  their  muscle, 
and  so,  after  all,  there  is  the  question  of 
mind  versus  muscles.  It  is  a  question  of  in- 
tellect. It  is  a  question  of  soul.  It  is  a 
question  of  the  spiritual  nature  of  man,  and 
the  cultivation  of  all  these  qualities  of  soul, 

[11] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


mind  and  spirit  are  the  necessary  means  by 
which  the  individual  and  the  community  are 
to  rise  above  its  condign  misery  and  per- 
sistent poverty.  Other  escape  there  is  none. 
Therefore  I  can  readily  understand  why 
Jesus  said,  "Ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and 
the  truth  shall  make  you  free." 

He  included  poverty  in  this  freedom,  for 
until  we  are  free  from  poverty  there  is  very 
little  chance  for  us  to  live.  There  is  no  free- 
dom. A  life  harassed  with  the  cares  of  this 
world  and  distressed  by  the  limitations  of 
the  unknown  is  impossible.  Naturally  we 
become  irritable,  impatient,  hard  to  live  with. 
Who  can  blame  us? 

When  a  man — or  a  woman — is  struggling 
to  take  care  of  those  dependent  upon  the 
effort,  whether  children,  or  parents,  or  broth- 
ers or  sisters,  or  himself,  he  knows  how  ex- 
tremely difficult  poverty  is.  There  is  no 
quality  in  it  to  sweeten  the  nature,  to  give 
the  individual  time  to  think  about  the  great 
things  of  God.  I  defy  any  man,  whose  time 
is  so  filled  with  work  that  his  mind  is  ab- 
sorbed with  it  and  the  thought  of  limitation 
[12] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


and  lack,  who  has  no  time  to  dwell  upon  the 
Spirit,  to  be  as  spiritual  as  he  would  be  if 
his  mind  M^ere  taken  away  from  these  dis- 
tressing- conditions! 

There  are  many  men  in  the  world  M-ho 
would  gladly  become  monks,  if  by  taking 
orders  and  going  into  an  institution,  they 
could  be  freed  from  these  responsibilities. 
But  we  never  overcome  an  error  hy  running 
away  from  it.  An  error  that  is  not  fairly 
met  and  conquered  by  the  truth,  will  live 
to  torment  us  later.  So  it  is  that  we  are 
combating  lack  and  limitation  in  our  jier- 
sonal  lives  and  in  our  business, — and  that 
by  divine  authority. 

We  are  taking  refuge  in  the  Bible,  in  the 
teachings  of  Jesus.  I  know  it  is  generally 
said  that  Jesus  recommended  poverty,  and 
when  the  rich  young  man  came  to  him  and 
asked  what  he  should  do  in  order  to  enter 
into  eternal  life,  Jesus  said,  "Go  and  sell 
that  thou  hast,  and  give  to  the  poor,  and 
thou  shalt  have  treasure  in  heaven :  and  come 
follow  me."  It  would  seem  indeed  as  if 
Jesus  were  recommending  poverty.  But 
[13] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


that  was  only  poverty  for  one  man,  because, 
if  he  sold  all  he  possessed  and  gave  to  the 
poor,  then  the  poor  would  not  be  poor.  They 
would  become  comfortable  and  compara- 
tively prosperous.  He  did  not  give  the  same 
advice  to  Nicodemus.  He  did  not  give  the 
same  advice  to  the  wife  of  the  Roman  offi- 
cer, who  was  fabulously  wealthy,  and  who, 
tradition  tells  us,  provided  him  with  his 
wonderful  seamless  robes.  We  hear  noth- 
ing of  his  giving  this  advice  to  other  people, 
but  just  to  this  young  man.  And  yet  we 
take  this  isolated  instance  from  the  New 
Testament  to  recommend  poverty  as  a  ne- 
cessity on  the  part  of  those  who  would  fol- 
low the  Christ.  Let  us  examine  the  case 
and  see. 

This  young  man  came  to  Jesus  with  great 
profession.  He  wanted  to  live  the  life,  and 
asked,  "What  good  thing  shall  I  do  that  I 
may  have  eternal  life?"  The  rich  young 
man  only  wanted  another  treasure.  He 
wanted  in  addition  to  all  his  wealth,  peace 
of  mind  and  the  spiritual  life.  They  can 
only  come  through  a  certain  amount  of  self- 
[14] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


sacrifice.  He  wanted  everything,  as  was 
evidenced  by  the  fact  that  when  Jesus  said 
to  him,  "Observe  the  commandments,  Hon- 
our thy  father  and  mother,  Bear  not  false 
witness,  Love  God  and  love  your  fellow 
men,"  the  young  man  protested  his  great 
morality.  He  said,  "All  these  have  I  ob- 
served from  my  youth."  He  was  extremely 
moral.  Then  Jesus  said,  "One  thing  thou 
lackest:  go  thy  way,  sell  whatsoever  thou 
hast,  and  give  to  the  poor,  and  thou  shalt 
have  treasure  in  heaven:  and  come,  take  up 
the  cross,  and  follow  me." 

Jesus  knew  that  he  loved  money  for  the 
sake  of  it  and  not  for  the  good  he  could  do 
with  it.  Jesus  was  clairvoyant  and  he  read 
the  minds  of  men.  He  saw  that  this  young 
man  was  an  accumulator,  an  acquirer,  gath- 
ering together  and  heaping  up  wealth  with 
only  one  object  in  the  world:  to  have  it. 
And  Jesus  knew  that  nothing  could  be  done 
for  the  man  until  he  \vrenched  him  away 
from  his  love  of  money  as  such. 

There  is  no  sin  in  having  a  great  deal  of 
money  if  we  use  it  wisely;  there  is  sin  in 
[16] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


not  having  any  at  all.  If  we  have  been  as- 
sociating virtue  with  poverty  and  poverty 
with  vice,  we  must  stop  it,  because  it  has  no 
Scriptural  reason.  On  the  contrary  every 
text  I  have  quoted  is  an  indication  of  the 
fact  that  righteousness  and  riches  go  hand 
in  hand.  If  we  are  not  comfortable  and 
prosperous,  then  in  some  mysterious  way  we 
are  not  righteous. 

Righteousness  means  right  thinking.  If 
we  are  not  righteous  it  does  not  mean  that 
we  are  not  moral.  Many  a  moral  man  is 
not  a  righteous  man,  but  every  righteous 
man  is  a  moral  man.  Hence  it  is  that  we 
see  so-called  very  pious  men  who  are  very 
poor.  True;  but  there  are  riches  that  come 
through  right  thinking.  There  are  many 
who  do  not  realise  that  "all  the  Father  hath 
is  theirs."  They  do  not  realise  that  it  is 
"the  Father's  good  pleasure  to  give  them  the 
kingdom";  not  realising  it,  they  try  to  beat 
the  desire  down  with  semi-starvation,  or 
starvation  altogether,  on  the  principle  that 
goodness  and  gold  are  never  found  in  the 
same  company.  Everywhere  you  hear  it, 
[16] 


•A 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


until  it  has  become  common  belief  that  a  rich 
man  must  be  a  dishonest  man, — dishonest 
somewhere,  somehow, — or  he  would  not  be 
rich.  People  tell  you  that  a  man  cannot 
acquire  a  certain  sum  of  money  without 
being  dishonest,  without  doing  dishonest 
things.  That  may  be  true  in  some  cases, 
but  not  in  all. 

The  thing  we  must  learn  through  the  study 
of  Christianity  in  its  scientific  sense,  is  that 
poverty  is  no  more  the  creation  of  God  than 
is  disease,  and  that  God  does  not  wish  his 
children  to  be  poor  any  more  than  he  wishes 
them  to  be  sinful  or  sickly,  and  that  it  is 
man's  divine  right  to  be  comfortable,  to  be 
well  fed,  to  be  well  clothed,  to  be  free.  And 
when  he  knows  the  truth  concerning  his  di- 
vine heritage,  he  will  be  free.  And  when 
worry  and  anxiety  give  place  to  trust  and 
confidence  in  the  Almighty,  when  man  re- 
alises that  God  is  indeed  his  Banker,  even 
as  he  is  his  Life,  then  will  man  come  to  the 
mount  of  tranquillity^  of  thought  and  clear- 
ness of  mind  and  perspicacity,  and  these  are 
the  essential  necessities  of  all  successful  en- 
[17] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


terprise.  But  no  man  can  succeed  whose 
mind  is  hampered  by  fear  and  anxiety,  for 
these  hmit  his  vision.  He  can  not  see  his 
opportunities.  The  man  who  is  afraid  "shall 
not  see  when  good  cometh,"  says  the  Bible. 
The  man  who  is  not  afraid  "does  not  see 
evil  even  when  it  approacheth,"  says  the 
Bible.  He  has  no  eye  for  it.  He  has  no 
belief  in  it.  He  has  no  thought  of  lack,  no 
belief  in  insufficiency  and  poverty,  and  con- 
sequently having  no  belief  in  it,  or  fear  of 
it,  it  can  never  touch  him. 

We  must  go  out  in  the  direction  of  that 
which  we  desire,  and  going  on  in  the  direc- 
tion of  it,  we  shall  find  it  coming  to  meet 
us.  Again  it  is  the  story  of  the  prodigal 
son  and  the  father.  As  man  turns  in  the 
direction  of  God  the  Banker,  God  the 
Banker  is  there  to  meet  him  and  his  every 
demand. 

How  often  have  we  demanded  of  God 
that  he  meet  our  daily  requirements  ?  Very 
rarely.  How  often  have  we  turned  to  other 
sources,  to  other  channels,  to  visible  things, 
and  often  with  the  thought  that  if  our  sub- 
[18] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


stance  did  not  come  through  these,  it  would 
not  come  at  all,  for  there  was  no  other  place 
for  it  to  come  from?  How  often  men  have 
said,  "Every  avenue  and  every  channel  is 
closed!"  When  men  say  that,  they  forget 
that  the  resources  of  the  Holy  Spirit  are  in- 
exhaustible, eternal,  and  infinite  in  number. 
When  men  limit  the  channels  of  their  sup- 
ply, or  the  avenues  for  their  advancement 
to  their  field  of  vision,  or  to  a  particular 
line  of  business,  they  forget  that  God  has 
infinite  resources  wherewith  to  bless  and  en- 
rich them.  And  it  is  God  who  blesses  and 
enriches  us, — though  some  men  think  they 
acquire  their  fortunes  through  their  own  in- 
genuity. They  deceive  themselves.  There 
is  only  one  source  through  which  true  riches 
ever  come,  and  this  is  the  Great  Source  of 
all  Substance,  God. 

Riches  come  to  the  man  who  exercises  his 
mind,  his  thought  force,  through  concentra- 
tion on  the  plane  of  the  subjective,  dwelling 
particularly  upon  the  thing  desired,  upon 
success,  upon  prosperity,  and  never  allow- 
ing his  mind  to  dwell  upon  lack  or  poverty. 
[19] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


If  it  knocks  at  his  door,  he  says  to  it,  "Get 
thee  behind  me,  Satan." 

How  many  of  us  do  this  when  the  sugges- 
tion of  limitation  or  poverty  knocks  at  the 
door, — how  many  of  us  say,  "Get  thee  be- 
hind me"?  Not  many!  We  cry  out  and  be- 
come at  once  trembly  and  shaky.  Do  things 
look  as  if  they  were  going  to  turn  the  wrong 
way?  Immediately  the  man's  heart  faints 
within  him.  How  many  take  refuge  in  the 
thought:  "The  Lord  is  my  shepherd,  I  shall 
not  want,"  the  Lord  is  my  Banker?  How 
many  take  refuge  in  the  Truth  ?  How  manj?^ 
are  able  in  trouble  to  take  refuge  in  the  Di- 
vine Truth,  remaining  cheerful  and  realis- 
ing that  God  is  indeed  their  Banker,  and 
that  "No  good  thing  will  he  withhold  from 
them  that  walk  uprightly"? 

At  first,  perhaps, '  this  sounds  somewhat 
foolish  because  we  have  not  been  taught  in 
the  past  to  rely  upon  the  Infinite.  We  have 
been  taught  that  when  our  material  streams 
are  dry,  it  is  useless  to  look  elsewhere ;  if  we 
have  taken  refuge  in  prayer,  it  has  nearly 
always  been  a  form  of  petition,  a  begging 
[20] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


of  God  that  he  might  in  his  wonderful  mercy 
lift  us  up  out  of  our  trouble. 

How  rarely  have  we  said:  "Thou  art  my 
Banker  and  Thou  knowest  my  needs.  Thy 
substance  is  greater  than  all  my  needs. 
Thine  abundance  is  greater  than  every  de- 
mand I  can  make  upon  it.  Thy  resources 
are  unlimited.  Thy  ways  are  innumerable 
and  infinite.  There  is  none  like  Thee!  If 
a  few  channels  are  closed  on  that  side,  there 
are  others  over  here,  and  back  of  me  and  in 
front  of  me,  that  are  open.  I  shall  claim 
my  divine  right.  I  shall  claim  substance 
as  my  own." 

Some  ma\'  say  that  this  new  religion  is 
deifying  prosperity.  Well,  let  us  admit  it 
is  a  new  religion  that  is  deifying  prosperity. 
Is  that  not  just  a  trifle  better  than  the  old 
religion  in  which  men  deified  poverty? 

But  we  are  not  deifying  prosperity.  We 
are  claiming  it  as  the  divine  right  of  every 
child  of  God.  And  once  this  fact  filters  it- 
self into  the  mind  of  man  he  becomes  strong 
in  the  degree  he  understands  its  meaning. 
Any  thoughts  that  make  for  failure  grad- 
[21] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


ually  lose  their  hold  upon  him, — anger,  fear, 
ignorance, — these  give  place  to  spiritual  en- 
lightenment. Knowing  the  truth,  we  be- 
come free,  free  from  anything  that  makes 
for  poverty.  Slowly  but  surely  we  rise 
above  the  miasma  of  this  blighting  influence 
upon  human  life. 

Perhaps  we  have  thought  that  society  has 
conspired  against  us.  Perhaps  some  of  us 
have  felt  that  it  was  a  wise  act  on  the  part 
of  God  that  we  did  not  have  prosperity  and 
riches,  because  if  we  had  had  them  we  might 
have  become  renegade.  Well,  that  may  be 
so,  but  many  become  renegade  without  riches 
as  the  incentive.  More  men  have  become 
renegades  without  riches  than  with  it.  That 
a  few  rich  men  have  become  vicious  is  true. 
But  we  must  not  be  limited  in  our  investi- 
gation of  things.  Look  where  you  will  and 
what  do  you  find?  You  find  this  wretched 
thing, — poverty!  Truly  there  can  be  no 
more  room  for  it  in  heaven  than  for  disease. 
I  can  no  more  conceive  of  a  poor  man  hav- 
ing a  comfortable  place  in  the  kingdom  of 
God  than  I  can  conceive  it  of  a  sick  man  or 
[22] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


a  sinful  man;  because,  if  a  man  were  strug- 
gling with  poverty  or  disease,  and  were  in 
the  kingdom  of  heaven,  it  would  not  be  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  to  him.  There  is  no 
room  for  poverty  in  the  kingdom  of  God 
any  more  than  there  is  for  disease. 

Poverty  is  a  shadow,  that  is  pretending 
to  be  something,  a  passing  ghost,  that  has 
derived  most  of  its  power  from  our  belief 
in  it.  Who  is  there  who  has  not  felt  its 
blighting  influence  ?  Whether  or  not  he  has 
actually  felt  it  himself,  he  has  had  those  close 
to  him  who  have  felt  it.  Who  is  there  who 
has  not  felt  that  old  age  will  bring  with  it 
the  pangs  of  poverty?  This  is  a  blighting 
thought.  It  is  poverty  that  we  must  array 
ourselves  against,  because  it  is  so  provoca- 
tive of  discord,  disease  and  dissension.  Who 
has  not  lived  in  a  family  and  felt  the  weight 
of  its  limitations  ? 

In  the  past  we  rather  argued  in  favour  of 
it,  and  said  that  mastering  it  developed 
character;  through  the  clash  with  poverty 
genius  was  born.  It  is  true  that  men  have 
struggled  up  through  wretched  poverty  and 
[23] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


made  good;  but  all  the  presidents  of  the 
United  States  were  not  born  in  log  cabins. 
Do  not  let  us  forget  that.  We  emphasise 
one  or  two  who  have  succeeded,  forgetting 
that  the  greater  number  of  the  successful 
were  neither  born  nor  raised  in  squalid  sur- 
roundings. We  have  just  as  good  and  suc- 
cessful men  who  have  come  up  out  of  a  beau- 
tiful harmonious  prosperity.  So  again  we 
say  that  poverty  has  nothing  to  recommend 
it  except  the  things  it  may  develop  in  some 
characters.  A  man  may  develop  a  beauti- 
ful character  in  a  harmonious,  refined  at- 
mosphere, though  there  are  those  who  may 
disagree  with  me.  It  is  said  that  the  mus- 
cles of  the  most  feeble  become  strong  in  an 
atmosphere  of  prosperity.  I  am  sure  there 
are  those  who  would  like  a  chance  to  try  and 
see  if  they  could  not  grow  strong  in  an  at- 
mosphere where  there  was  less  strife  and 
struggle.  I  know  there  are  many  things 
you  could  do,  not  only  for  yourselves  and 
for  those  you  love,  but  for  the  outsider,  if 
you  had  more  substance,  and  could  do  it  le- 
gitimately and  in  a  Christlike  way. 
[24] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


You  frequently  wish  that  you  had  more 
than  you  have,  that  you  might  be  of  more 
service  in  the  world.  What  are  those 
wishes,  those  desires,  if  they  are  not  the  in- 
stinctive longing  for  those  things  you  could 
use  for  yourselves  and  others?  When  you 
become  rich  and  prosperous  through  Truth, 
you  will  not  have  any  more  than  God  in- 
tended you  to  have.  "Behold,  all  that  I 
have  is  thine;"  and  Jesus  was  not  talking 
foolishness  when  he  said,  "It  is  your  Fa- 
ther's good  pleasure  to  give  you  the  king- 
dom." "It  is  the  father's  good  pleasure" 
that  we  may  have  life  and  health  and 
strength  and  happiness  and  opulence. 

The  new  religion  says:  "Claim  it.  Not 
arrogantly,  but  as  your  divine  right  as  the 
child  of  God.  It  is  your  right  to  be  as  free 
from  poverty  as  from  anything  else  that  is 
distressing.  Go  out  into  the  world,  realis- 
ing that  it  is  j'our  right  to  live,  and  to  live 
well  and  comfortably.  This  does  not  mean 
to  live  foolishly.  It  means  to  live  as  God 
intended  you  should.  It  is  your  right; 
claim  it." 

[25] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


in  so-called  charity,  so  as  to  lift  them  above 
poverty  and  the  necessity  for  charity. 

Every  one  who  reads  this  would  be  hap- 
pier if  he  had  more  means  with  which  to  do 
good.  The  resurrection  of  Jesus  means 
vastly  more  than  we  shall  find  in  many  of  the 
interpretations  which  have  been  placed  upon 
it.  The  Christian  who  has  not  been  resur- 
rected above  lack  is  still  in  the  abysmal 
depths  where  there  is  no  peace,  no  power, 
no  freedom,  no  liberty.  Let  him  be  resur- 
rected never  so  high  above  his  passions,  if 
he  has  not  been  resurrected  above  his  pov- 
erties he  is  still  unhappy  because  the  thought 
of  limitation  oppresses  him. 

We  are  not  making  prosperity  a  god ;  we 
are  making  it  a  divine  necessity.  And  when 
you  think  it  over  you  will  see  it  is  your  di- 
vine right;  it  is  the  divine  right  of  every 
man,  woman,  and  child  in  the  world,  not  only 
to  breathe  all  the  air  and  take  all  the  rest, 
comfort  and  relaxation  he  needs,  but  also 
to  have  all  the  clothes  and  the  food  he  re- 
quires. We  give  him  all  the  air  he  wants, 
because  we  cannot  hide  it  from  him ;  but  we 
[28] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


do  not  give  him  the  right  to  the  other  things, 
and  we  do  not  take  the  right  ourselves  to 
trade  in  all  the  other  things. 

Demonstrating  prosperity  is  not  a  sin. 
We  should  say  every  day,  "The  Lord  is  my 
Shepherd,  I  shall  not  M  ant."  And  you  can 
substitute  the  word  Banker  for  Shepherd. 
"The  Lord  is  my  Banker,  I  shall  not  want." 
Are  you  distressed  in  your  business  lives? 
Hold  this  thought.  Are  you  suffering 
from  the  suggestion  of  limitation?  Has 
some  one  defrauded  you?  Take  this  sug- 
gestion: The  Lord  is  my  Banker,  I  shall 
not  want.  Hold  to  it.  And  in  ways  you 
cannot  think  of  to-day,  through  channels 
you  never  dreamed  of,  it  shall  come  to  you 
because  it  is  the  law :  you  shall  have  all  you 
need. 

Let  no  thought  of  lack  or  limitation 
knock  at  the  door  of  your  mind  and  find  ad- 
mittance. Put  a  sentinel  at  the  door,  and 
challenge  every  thought  that  comes.  If  it  is 
the  thought  of  lack,  reject  it  instantly  be- 
cause it  is  not  of  God.  Reject  the  thought 
of  poverty  just  as  quickly  as  you  would  the 
[29] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


thought  of  theft.  There  should  be  no  more 
room  in  your  mind  for  one  than  the  other. 
A  man  who  refuses  to  admit  a  thought  of 
theft  to  enter  his  consciousness,  will  take  a 
thought  of  poverty  into  his  mind  and  not 
raise  a  doubt  about  it.  He  does  not  realise 
that  he  is  unrighteous  because  he  is  admit- 
ting an  unrighteous  thought.  He  has  ad- 
mitted the  idea  of  poverty  into  his  conscious- 
ness, and  later  on  he  marvels  that  he  finds 
it  manifesting  in  his  bodily  afF airs.  It  would 
be  a  miracle  if  it  did  not. 

Men  become  prosperous  because  of  their 
prosperous  thoughts  even  when  they  are  not 
righteous.  A  man  remains  poor  even  when 
he  is  pious  because  his  is  the  poverty  thought. 
Challenge  the  thought  of  poverty  every  time 
it  comes  to  your  door.  You  do  not  have  to 
admit  it  into  your  mental  household  any 
more  than  you  have  to  admit  a  tramp  of 
the  road  into  your  material  household.  You 
will  find  that  it  will  cause  you  as  much 
trouble,  and  more,  than  the  tramp,  because 
the  poverty  thought  clings  like  a  burr. 
Avoid  it  with  all  the  strength  of  your  char- 
[30] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


acter  and  purity  of  your  soul  because  it  does 
not  proceed  or  emanate  from  God,  who  is 
the  Giver  of  all  good,  the  Source  of  all 
blessings,  the  infinite  inexhaustible  Source 
of  all  supplj%  in  whom  there  is  no  lack;  "in 
whom  all  fulness  lies,"  says  the  Bible. 
There  is  no  limitation  ox'  lack  in  the  inex- 
haustible Source  of  all  Good.  If  you  can- 
not find  it  in  God,  you  cannot  find  it  any- 
where. 

If  any  suggestion  of  lack  comes  to  you,  be 
instant  in  prayer.  Do  not  allow  the  thought 
of  poverty  to  put  its  foot  over  the  thresh- 
old. Meet  it  with  this  positive  affirmation: 
"The  Lord  is  my  shepherd,  I  shall  not 
want;" — the  Lord  is  my  Banker,  I  lack  noth- 
ing. I  am  living  in  the  inexhaustible 
abundance  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  I  am  not 
afraid.  Depend  upon  it,  if  you  do  this,  you 
will  find  yourselves  benefited  mentally, 
physically,  financially;  it  will  be  the  begin- 
ning of  an  excellent  habit,  a  habit  which  will 
make  for  the  building  up  of  legitimate,  hon- 
ourable prosperity  and  the  usefulness  which 
[31] 


GOD  THE  BANKER 


grows  out  of  legitimate,  honourable  pros- 
perity. 

Let  this  thought  remain  with  you: — The 
Lord  is  my  Banker,  I  shall  not  want. 

A  righteous  man  thinketh  that  which  is 
righteous,  and  whilst  he  does  so,  and  walk- 
eth  uprightly,  he  shall  have  the  Lord  in 
heaven  favourable  unto  him  in  all  his  ways, 

"ISIy  God  is  able  to  make  all  grace  abound 
imto  you,  that  ye,  always  having  all  suffi- 
ciency in  all  things,  may  abound  to  every 
good  work. 

"My  God  shall  supply  all  your  need  ac- 
cording to  his  riches  in  glory  by  Christ 
Jesus." 


[32] 


4 


